Tourism and Tourism At Home: A Qualitative Study of Relationships between Tourism and Ethnic Restaurants

Abstract

This study explores how ethnic restaurants serve their role as "tourism at home", by investigating customers" motivation to visit ethnic restaurants, especially in relation to tourism. This study adopted a grounded theory approach, using semi-structured interviews composed of two phases. The first phase of interviews was conducted with 18 British people who had experienced at least one of the four ethnic restaurants, Chinese, Japanese, Thai or Korean. The second phase of interviews was conducted with 12 British people who were actually visiting one of the origin countries of those restaurants, Korea, to see if people share the same motivation to visit ethnic restaurants as travel motivation. Six common motivational factors between visiting ethnic restaurants and travel (i.e., to change/ escape from the routine, to experience something new/ different, to experience and learn about another culture, curiosity/ desire to explore unknown, togetherness, and travelling itself) were established through findings, and the relationships between motivation to visit ethnic restaurants and tourism, and how they influence each other were identified.

What makes inauthenticity dangerous

“…Purposive sampling was used in this study. Purposive sampling is helpful to identify information-rich, context-specifi c samples relevant to the study (Patton, 2002;Saunders et al, 2018;Jang & Eves, 2019). Compared to other random and non-random sampling techniques, purposive sampling was found to be more fi t for the research questions of this study to understand the inauthentic culinary practices in Goa induced by tourism, which have a potential impact upon the cultural identity.…”

Willingness to eat ethnic foods and food experience: a study on Khasi Food

“…Long (2018) stated that ethnic food encompasses cuisines, dishes and ingredients that represent a heritage that is not part of the mainstream or dominant culture, thereby making it characterised as the social status of “other”. Ethnic food is a regional feature that encompasses the cultural attributes pertaining to attitudes, values, traditions, heritages and beliefs/religions (Lin, 2019; Jang and Eves, 2019). According to Timothy and Ron (2013), ethnic food comprises tangible features (ingredients and cooking equipment) and intangible features (tastes, smell, recipes and cooking traditions).…”

“…According to Jang and Eves (2019), there have been previous studies that claim that novelty seeking is one of the main reasons for eating at ethnic restaurants. Torres (2002) further added that the more people are exposed to ethnic foods and dishes, the more they are interested in eating local and ethnic foods.…”

“…More and more tourists in the world are looking for concrete learning experiences, and in this endeavour, the gastronomic experience, in highly diverse ways, is playing an increasingly prominent part (World Tourism Organization, 2012; Dixit, 2020). This kind of experience often takes the tourist away from the daily routine of food and cuisine to the unfamiliar gastronomic realm (Bessiere and Tibere, 2013; Lin, 2019) and closer to the host culture (Jang, 2017; Jang and Eves, 2019). According to Long (2018), the World Food Tourism Association has stated that the food being offered at a destination has to be unique, of high quality and memorable, if that destination wants to attract culinary tourists and create commending experience for them.…”

“…, 2007; Jang, 2017; Kuhn et al. , 2018; Lunchaprasith and Macleod, 2018; Jang and Eves, 2019). As a part of ethnicity, the preparation and serving of food are unique among ethnic groups because they are linked with their culture (Sukalakamala and Boyce, 2007).…”