The proliferation of food-focused television series within developing countries has garnered substantial attention and popularity. This empirical study endeavours to investigate the tangible effects of such food shows on intent to visit these locales as perceived by prospective tourists and impacting regeneration of tourism. The study places emphasis on pivotal factors, including the cuisine, dining, and food related tourism activity (FRTA), which is highlighted in these food-based shows. The collected data underwent analysis utilizing both SmartPLS and artificial neural networks (ANN). The findings derived from the analyses underscored the paramount importance of peculiarity of cuisine as variables significantly impacting food-related tourism. Notably, these aspects emerged as principal determinants in shaping tourists' perceptions and intentions to engage in culinary-driven travel experiences.
TopIntroduction
“Laughter is brightest in the place where food is good” – Irish Proverb
Since time immemorial, food has been a source of not only physical wellbeing for a human body but has also been the fount of moods, emotions, happiness, fun, excitement, joy, ecstasy, and togetherness. It has acted as a bridge between communities, races, geographical boundaries and plummeted the social differentiations. It is no more a few morsels used to satiate hunger but brings entirely a new dimension of experience on our table. This can be easily felt from the below quote:
“Food is not just eating energy. It’s an experience” – Guy Fieri
People travel to different places from their usual environment in pursuit of various purposes giving rise to a phenomenon called tourism (UNWTO, 2008). The purpose of tourism could vary from leisure to business, adventure to spiritual, pilgrimage to visiting family and friends and so on (Srivastava, 2023a; Srivastava and Shandilya, 2023), however, tourism always demands for basic requirements like transportation, accommodation and food apart from the products offered by the tourism destinations.
Tourists during the visitation to a destination taste, experience and appreciate the local food inside the local environment (Hall and Mitchell, 2001; Slocum and Everett, 2010). It is people’s all kinds of food and drink experience while travelling (Ab Karim and Chi, 2010; Long, 2004). Though Zelinsky, (1985) coined the term food tourism in its crude form, considering food itself as a tourism purpose building upon tourist’s intention to visit a destination is a very recent phenomenon (Hall and Sharples, 2003; Kim et al., 2009; Long, 2013) opening a niche tourism category called food tourism invariably termed as gastronomic tourism, culinary tourism, cuisine tourism or gourmet tourism (Everett, 2016; Shalini and Duggal, 2015). Authors in this research have a clear view that taking food and beverage during travel and travelling for the same food and beverage are two different extents in terms of their objectives and purposes.
Food educates tourists about local culture through acclimatization, gives different kinds of experiences through participation and ultimately helps in creating certain positive destination image (Everett, 2008; Fox, 2007; Long, 1998; Okumus et al., 2013; Silkes, 2012; Söderström, 2022). In return destinations get additional economic benefits through food tourism which percolate to all tourism stakeholders (World Food Travel Association, 2022). Foods, prepared and served to tourists by the local community keeping in mind the subjective well-being of all human and non-human in the local ecosystem would regenerate tourism (Bellato, L. and Cheer, 2021; Bellato et al., 2023).
The principal objective of the present examination is to broadly scrutinize the effect of three identified hypotheses viz., food or cuisine, dining or restaurant, and the food related tourism activities conspicuously presented in food-based shows, on the overall destination perception. This study pursues to probe into the complex aspects of how these constructs, packaged in culinary content, contribute to determining the acuity and depiction of a destination. By exploring these organised aspects, the research aims to offer treasured understandings into the intricate interaction between food representation, and travel intentions.