Explore, eat and revisit: does local food consumption value influence the destination’s food image?

This research investigates how foreign tourists’ revisit intentions are influenced by their local food consumption (LFC) value by emphasizing their attitude towards the local food and the corresponding destination food image. It will also reveal the foreign tourists’ food consumption value and explore its influences on the destination food image. The data collection was performed from 433 foreign tourists who visited Delhi, India, using a structured survey instrument and chief constructs were measured as the first-order reflective variables. The 39 items associated with the local food consumption value underwent both exploratory and confirmatory evaluations. We employed partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The model's discriminant and convergent validity, consistency, and overall fit were evaluated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The findings of the hypotheses testing revealed that "tourists’ attitudes and behaviors toward the local cuisine” had a significant and positive influence on their “intention to visit/revisit” and “intention to recommend”. Also, “destination food image” significantly and positively influenced the “intention of tourist to visit/revisit”; however, it negatively and insignificantly influenced the “intention of tourists to recommend”. This research used five variables related to local food consumption—quality, health/nutrition, emotion, prestige, and price—that impact tourists' attitudes and behaviors toward local foods in Delhi. However, in addition to these constructs, other factors or constructs may be involved that could affect the tourists' attitudes and behaviors. Future studies might explore and include these constructs to provide a more comprehensive image of Delhi's local food consumption value. Understanding tourists’ food-linked behaviors is critical for effective market conduct. However, the interrelations between travelers’ destination food image, LFC value, their perceptions of the local cuisine, and behavioral intentions are still unknown, and this will be one of the first attempt to discuss these behaviors

Implicit linking of food entities in social media

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under IRC Funding Initiative; DSO National Laboratorie

Developing Culinary Tourism Experiences for Inbound Travellers in Vietnam

In recent years, the growing popularity of Vietnamese cuisine has become an attraction of the country that motivates an increasing number of travellers to visit Vietnam to taste the cuisine. Together with food tasting, there is a wide variety of activities related to food that have the potentiality to attract international visitors. The main goal of this thesis was to provide suggestions and directions to develop culinary tourism experiences for foreign visitors in Vietnam by finding out their perspective towards current gastronomic experiences in the destination country and discovering how satisfied they were when engaging in food-involved activities. The paper also discussed inbound travellers’ expectations for culinary experiences prior to the travels in Vietnam together with post-travel feelings and behaviours. The thesis used mixed methods, in which qualitative method was primarily adopted to answer the research issue. An electronic survey was conducted and posted on different social channels. Simultaneously, interviews were carried out with the support of two experienced stakeholders working in the tourism sector. The findings of the research revealed that most of the inbound tourists were satisfied with their food experiences in Vietnam. Generally, those experiences met their expectations, yet they still lacked some elements to go beyond what they expected. The results also showed that the country had various potentialities and advantageous opportunities to develop this emerging niche market. On the other hand, several existent problems present a threat to its growth. Amid those controversies, development solutions were suggested in an attempt to tackle the problems as well as to improve the experiences of future international visitors in the country

Ethnoregional social dramas of Southeast Asian in globalism: recasting cultural heritage for ethnic revivals

This book offers an interpretative symbolic analysis of present global phenomenon that gives rise ethnic culture as regional identity. With a multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995 and 1998), this book is a sort of comparative ethnographies which sought the collective identities of the Melayu Baru or Neo-Malay and Chinese Peranakan or Nanyang in two cities of Southeast Asia. The Neo-Malay with Islam solidarity (Ummah) is attached to ethnoregional community, in contrast, the Chinese Nanyang or Peranakan got their identity remaking with syncretic popular beliefs in the Straits of Melaka. Ethnicity data of Neo-Malay and Chinese Nanyang of Georgetown of Malaysia and Medan City of Indonesia are divided into four Social Drama phases (Turner, 1982), they are: Breach, Liminal, Redress, and Reintegration. Ethnography of ethnic formations and revivals comprises of: (1) Colonialism as Breach: Ethnic Categories of the Dutch Indies and British Malay (2) Nationalism as Liminal: Ethno-national symbolic disputes (3) Ethnoregionalism as Redress: regionalizing the cultural hybridity of Neo-Malay and of Chinese Nanyang, and (4) Globalism as Reintegration: galvanizing heritage fiestas for global culture. The reproduced hybrid heritage of Neo-Malay and Chinese Nanyang is annually performed in public spaces and social media by the ethnic groups in Georgetown-Malaysia and Medan North Sumatra. Restoration of ethnic rituals and festivals arises to uphold ethnic identities of social groups. Even the solitary rituals, which move into the public spaces, solidify the ethnic identity and create “communitas” in urban areas. Beliefs and traditions are the foundation of shared identities that must have any adjustments to external factors. The observed and analyzed ethnic revivals in Georgetown and Medan city are using various reconstruction strategies; recasting of cultural heritage reproductions in the religious sites and public spaces of urban areas, re-enacting annual rituals and festivals. The ethnoregional shared identities are recast as ethnic revival strategy in globalism

Motives, consequences and variety in the adoption of Halal practices in Australian restaurants

There is a growing adoption of halal in some form in restaurants around the world. The objective of this research is to understand the varieties of halal adoption and identify the complex interplay between cultural and business motives. Data collected from semi-structured interviews of 50 halal restaurateurs and the analysis shows the reason for adopting halal varies across restaurants: it can be symbolic, explicit or core existential. In terms of motivation, three themes and eight subthemes were identified. A market orientation theme relates to passion for food and quality, competition and reducing business uncertainty. A cultural orientation theme relates to religion, loyalty to culture, and loyalty to traditional and regional food styles. There is also a personal development theme that relates to being independent. Running a halal restaurant may have little to do with religion per se, and different motivations are associated with the three variations in the degree of halal adoption. The motivation, variety of adoption and performance of the restaurants were coded by independent raters and a multivariate regression analysis was conducted on the relationship between motivations, adoption of halal and market performance. The only significant predictor of a restaurant’s market performance is its offering of a regional food style, indicating that adherence to regional traditions and provenance is a core driver of market performance rather than having a certificate or the degree of halal adoption in particular. This research has practical implications for the restaurant industry, both in Australia and across the globe, informing restaurateurs who are contemplating adopting halal. It provides an opportunity for restaurateurs to re-assess motives and optimise business decisions in order to make their restaurant more successful and gratifying in a multicultural society

Cities: The cultural dimension

In the last 50 years culture has undergone a dramatic shift in meaning and practice. In the post-War period a narrow social elite set dominant cultural values. The notion became limited to heritage, its material forms, and its conservation; the cultural realm was separate from the economic. Today culture is all of this and more: it is about new ideas, social groups and products, as well as the transformation of existing ones; it is at once economic and social, as well as cultural. Cultural values generally reflect a more diverse and democratic social composition (Marwick 1991). In this period the key term – culture – has undergone repeated interrogation: what is culture, what is its value, and to whom? Moreover, the nature and degree of these terms, and their relationships to the city, have changed. Culture is both embodied in social groups, and in places and spaces. Woven into this cultural transformation cities have also undergone an unprecedented phase of redevelopment and change the world over; arguably, the last 50 years being their most tumultuous, particularly with regards to culture (Hall 1998). The built form of the city is the stage and actor in cultural change, the ‘City Beautiful’ movement of the early twentieth century being a notable example (Olsen 1986). Critically, the provision (and denial) of public spaces has been an important site of social and cultural demonstration that has challenged the regulated and enclosed prestige of buildings (Amin 2008). Such change does not only concern material infrastructure, but also its governance, and relationships with other cities and regions, nationally and internationally. The aim of this paper - to sketch out the possible future cultural dimension of cities - is a challenging task; one where culture in both its old and new forms will have a greater impact than has been previously evident. We preface the review of the past 50 years, which is sub-divided into three temporal sections, with some definitional issues regarding culture, the creative industries in the UK; these two parts constitute the first half of the paper. In broad terms, four iterations of city-culture modalities can be identified: heritage, cultural and creative industries, regeneration, and the experience economy. In the second half of the paper, arising from the review of the past, we identify five drivers of change likely to influence the future (education and income, migration, technology, governance and deindustrialisation); these constitute the platform for developing six scenarios of the future city and its cultural dimension

'Recommended by Duncan Hines': Automobility, Authority, and American Gastronomy

How did Duncan Hines become an authority on roadside dining? What role did he have in the consumption of food and the use of automobiles? What were the messages he pronounced to his audiences? In "'Recommended by Duncan Hines,'" I examine the formation of Duncan Hines as the premier American restaurant critic as occurring in national journals and self-published guidebooks of the 1930s to 1950s. Analyzed as a function of the discursive production of power/knowledge within the historical contexts of cultures of automobility, consumption, and authority, I frame Hines as a mediator between producers and consumers, a position gaining in significance in the early 20th century. Narrating the exchange of commodities, Hines' gastronomy acted as a fount of nationalism and American "taste" based in perceptions of geography, history, and authenticity. Furthermore, my thesis presents a model for comprehending the origins, role, and effects of critics and other cultural authorities

Tasting the museum: how the cultural practices of eating out and viewing art converge in Istanbul's museum restaurants

Today's museums, with few exceptions, include cafés and restaurants, which, together with additional ancillary spaces such as design shops, film and performance venues comprise the museum experience. Istanbul's private art museums are closely following this seemingly normative trend. In doing so they attempt to meet their mission statements' claims of social inclusion and audience development. This thesis investigates and problematizes the convergence of two cultural practices that meet in the museum restaurant, namely eating out and viewing art, their conceptual similarities and intersections and their convergence in the museum restaurants of Istanbul's private art museums. A discussion of heterogeneous concepts of consumption, which traces the tensions between group norms and individual agency, of the emergence and incorporation of consumption practices of subcultures provides the basis for an in-depth investigation of eating out and viewing art. But the symbolic economy, the main actors of which are institutions backed by private capital and entrepreneurs in the cultural field, significantly and irreversibly alters the urban fabric. At the same time, processes of urban transformation often remain unquestioned and are presented and celebrated by their beneficiaries, by politicians, media or the complicit art world as the means of resolving a multiplicity of problems of a metropolis such as Istanbul. Istanbul's art museums and their restaurants appeal primarily to those who already have the "right" disposition to appreciate and confidently navigate the intricacies of the culinary and the artistic field. The translation of the private tastes of museum patrons and restaurant owners into specific culinary, curatorial, architectural and atmospheric elements often results in rituals, experiences and spaces, which, while seemingly being available to everybody, construct symbolic and material boundaries for those without said necessary dispositions

But we have no legends : the conservation of Singapore's Chinatown

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1982.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCHThesis (M.S.)--M.I.T., Dept. of Architecture, 1982.Bibliography: leaves 78-80.by Pui Leng Woo.M.C.P

Developing authentic foodservices to support the development of tourist attractions in Ghana.

Foodservice outlets have the potential to enhance the experience of visitors to a wide range of visitor attractions. As such introducing authentic foodservice outlets could potentially play significant role in the development of cultural-heritage and natural attractions in Ghana. Consuming local traditional foods leave nostalgic, memorable feelings, which create 'golden locations' and in turn encourage repeat visits and increase visitor traffic at these locations. The foodservice sector has however, been supported in Ghana generally and has been largely ignored at visitor attractions. In situations where foodservice outlets are limited, visitors can potentially find themselves unable to purchase any refreshments at the attractions. This detracts from their experience and discourages repeat visits. The main aim of this thesis is critically to evaluate the integration of foodservice at Ghanaian visitor attractions and to identify a suitable approach for developing authentic foodservice outlets at the sites. This thesis derived data from both secondary and primary research. With the lack of available data and records on Ghanaian visitor attractions and foodservice operations, the primary data collection exercise used a mixed-method approach in a two-Phase study over a one-year period. An exploratory survey of visitor attractions and foodservice operations in the research area, which also involved focus groups (n=56) and individual (n=6) interviews, within the academia and with stakeholders of tourism and foodservice sectors. Based on the findings of the Phasel study, the Phase2 study, involved a visitor survey (n=528) at six selected visitor attractions. A follow-up interview was conducted with attractions and foodservice personnel (n=24) at the attractions where the survey was conducted. The findings of the research have confirmed that the Ghanaian tourism industry has overlooked foodservice sector in the development of tourism and particularly at visitor attractions. It also established the importance of foodservice as part of the overall experiences at visitor attractions. It proposes independent! multi-owned/ franchises as the best alternative approaches for developing and integrating authentic foodservice outlets with Ghanaian visitor attractions. Therefore, the study proposes introducing formally trained staff to the informal traditional foodservice outlets to develop authentic foodservice outlets at visitor attractions as a positive way to support the tourism industry in Ghana. It also suggests that the proposals made to address the current situation in Ghana may be applicable to other countries in Africa seeking to develop sectors of their economies and be of interest to the relevant and the international bodies such as UNWTO, UNDP, and UNEP who seek to promote the development of sustainable tourism practices