Touristic Gazing and Tasting in the Cambodian Cuisine

Cambodian food tourism, particularly in Battambang Province, provides an excellent opportunity to generate increased tourist numbers and to create a significant point of difference within a globalized and highly competitive tourist marketplace. Responding to that nexus, this research explores international tourists' feedback from their food experiences in Battambang Province, Cambodia. This research used data gleaned from TripAdvisor about seven restaurants in Battambang that offered international tourist food experiences. Those restaurants included restaurants that were also social enterprises, restaurants with cooking classes, and stand-alone restaurants. From that cohort our research used 118 reviews that, through thematic analysis, we distilled into our research themes. The research identified six themes as key drivers for the tourist food experience in Battambang. They included: experiencing the taste of Cambodian food; service encounters and environment; food price and value for money; socialization with local people and other tourists in an educational environment; authenticity and helping the community. Consequently, this research not only provides a valuable and unique insight for potential tourists and academics, but also illuminates valuable strategies for locals who wish to provide future tourist food experiences in Battambang.

Teaching Basque Gastronomy: From on Location to Online in Pandemic Times

In the early spring of 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak obliged us to slow down the pace of life in many ways, altering our well-laid plans. This included canceling a travel course trip I had planned with a group of undergraduate students from Siena College (near Albany, New York) to the Basque Country in Northern Spain for May 2020. In thinking about how to replace the sensory richness of a highly experiential trip, I created a series of online projects that incorporated tenets of the Slow Food movement, mindfulness, and Basque gastronomy in context. Home cooking became a necessary alternative to travel for my students not only to complete their course requirements remotely, but ultimately to mindfully reflect upon valuable culinary experiences and a slower pace of life through both sensory and cognitive educational methods.

Investigating cuisine experiences in the Maldives: A novel research method utilising tasting buffets

Food as a tourist activity offers the rare prospect of fulfilling all five senses, especially taste, and heightening experiences. For food studies in tourism, taking part in the act of eating and drinking as part of the research design is rare. This study aims to address this methodological gap by introducing tasting buffets as a novel research method. Buffets, which included local dishes, were arranged at three guesthouses on three different local islands in the Maldives. International tourists staying in guesthouses were recruited to sample the dishes and were then invited to participate in interviews about their experiences, perceptions, and sensory memories of food. Various themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews, including food neophilia and neophobia, food to explore local culture, indifference to food, and the connection be-tween food, memories, and sensory recall. The study offers an effective and practical meth-odological contribution towards embodiment in tourism food research. It offers a valuable method to prompt discussions of local cuisines, unfamiliar cuisines, and holiday food memo-ries, behaviours, and intentions. The efficient, practical, and useful methods utilised in this explorative study can be used as a blueprint for future food tourism studies, to explore food sensations and sensory memory recall related to food experiences.

VISITORS MOTIVATION TO ATTEND THE FESTIVAL OF EDIBLE FLOWERS

The article examines participants' motivation to an edible flowers festival and their diversification in terms of socio-demographic characteristics. Sixteen motives for participating in the festival were empirically tested and presented in four motivational dimensions. The data was collected during the 5th Edible Flower Festival in Poland in 2020 using a questionnaire. The results show that the most common motive for participating in a culinary event was the need for socialization. In contrast, the need to experience new culinary discoveries/experiences was slightly less critical. The findings also show significant differences in the participants' motivational dimensions due to socio-demographic characteristics. Women more often participate in events with a high motivation to escape from the routine of everyday life and cultural exploration. Younger respondents were more often motivated by searching for culinary novelties, and older respondents - by cultural exploration and escaping from daily routine. For visitors accompanied by family members, the priority was socialization and escape from routine. In contrast, those accompanied by acquaintances/friends indicated a cultural exploration and encountering new culinary experiences more often. The study results may provide a better understanding of the participants of a culinary festival, increase the effectiveness of marketing and promotional activities, and thus increase the satisfaction of participants in subsequent events.

Cooking courses and tourism - entertainment, education, escapism, or esthetics?

In this study, the experience dimensions developed by Pine and Gilmore were evaluated in the case of the cooking courses in which the tourists attended during their holidays. The data collection consists of comments from the tourists from different nationalities, who visited Turkey, and who shared their experiences connected to the participation in cooking courses in Istanbul. In total, 400 comments on five cooking courses in 2018-2019 were analyzed. The findings demonstrate that the tourists had an intense education and entertainment experience through the cooking courses. Moreover, although not as intense as the education and entertainment experience, some tourists were found to share their esthetics and escapism experiences. Consequently, the Pine and Gilmore’s experience dimensions have been validated for cooking courses. The study concludes that memorable experiences emerge and result in positive behavioral intentions.

Embracing Tea Culture in Hotel Experiences

Tea forms a part of food and beverage services in hospitality settings and thus has potential for delivering culinary and gastronomic tourism experiences. In particular, tea presentations and services can play a role for tea tourism as a niche within food and beverage operations. Furthermore, tea and food pairings as well as tea cocktails, and tea cookies or tea flavored sweets in hospitality settings while providing the visitor with tea experiences could be profitable for hospitality operations. These specialized tea products and services may serve to brand hotel offerings as different from that of others. In addition, international hotel chains as well as family-owned hotels by embracing national and regional tea traditions can deliver on the authentic beverage services that visitors expect to receive at local destinations. Also, tea culture and traditions can affect the design of hotel facilities and services. Special trainings as tea masters or sommeliers are offered by a few hotel-related tea companies in order to set quality standards and to allow tea sommeliers to rise to a similar recognition as wine sommeliers. Teatime services can be used a signature food and beverage service in hotels, showing the variety of high-quality services and excellence of food and beverage knowledge. Hotels can take this offer as an embracing attraction to guide guests making them familiar with cozy interior design and a light meal in order to present the abilities of cuisines and gastronomy outlets, too. Creating tea experiences becomes an important instrument contributing to tea-related tourism highlighted by the case of teatime services in international hotels.

Food motivational factors of tourists to Greece

Despite the fact that tourism is one of Greece's economic pillars and that food can lead to greater satisfaction and loyalty to the destination, little research effort has been devoted to understanding tourists' food consumption complexities. In response, this study aimed at investigating the themes behind the food motivations of international tourists to Greece. A qualitative approach was deployed by implementing semi-structured interviews among tour-ists (n=28), and a thematic analysis was conducted in order to categorize interviewees' statements into eight themes: local culture learning, authentic experience, novelty seeking, social interactions, sensory pleasure, health concerns, familiar food, and the need for suste-nance. These motivations were heterogeneous and exerted significant influence over food choices and eating behavior. Even though Greek destinations attract tourists primarily seek-ing journey-related food elements, other secondary motivations involving travel intentions independent of local gastronomy should not be neglected. Although the factors identified may not be exhaustive, this study provides a clear model for further research concerning tourists' food motivational factors in Greece and other Mediterranean destinations.

Authentic restaurants and food tourism: Food tourists versus general tourists

The current study assessed the influence of restaurant authenticity on tourists and whether this influence differs between general and food tourists. Responses from 575 tourists were collected from six restaurants. A Mehrabian-Russell-based model was tested using SmartPLS 3.0. Findings showed that restaurant authenticity directly positively influenced tourists’ satisfaction and indirectly positively influenced place attachment and restaurant loyalty. Yet, a multigroup analysis found no significant differences in restaurant authenticity’s influence on general and food tourists. There are both theoretical and practical implications from the current study. Regarding theory, findings from the conceptual model imply that restaurant authenticity plays an important role in indirectly forging consumers’ restaurant loyalty and place attachment. From a practical standpoint, since the multigroup analysis found no significant differences, destinations may want to consider developing marketing campaigns which appeal to both food tourists and general tourists.

Sustainable expedition and tasty meals: A design contradiction?

This study focuses on meals on tourist expeditions from a sustainable and experience design perspective. There are studies on expedition food from a medical and nutrition point of view but without an experiential dimension. The purpose of this study is to explore how tour operators are offering meal experiences through sustainable practice during extraordinary expeditions. We report findings from dog sledding expeditions on Arctic Svalbard and Kilimanjaro Mountain climbing. We first describe how meal experiences are integrated into the expeditions. Second, we examine how this is done sustainably. Third, we investigate whether the meal experiences capacitate consumer immersion to enhance the total experience of the expeditions. Finally, we discuss how the study contributes to the debate on meal experience design for sustainable nature-based tourism. The tour operator in Kilimanjaro served nutritious and tasty local food, while the Svalbard trips were based on nutritious dry food during the trip with culinary dinner experiences. All expedition designs combined nutritious and tasty experiences, although differently. Although it is often difficult to focus on sustainability and culinary experiences in extraordinary contexts, we discuss how both aspects can be combined so that expedition food can enhance the experience of consumers.

Consumption motivations, savoured positive emotions and savouring processes in recalling travel experiences of food

This study examines the motivation for tasting halal food amongst non-Muslim tourists during their recent trips away from home. It also integrates the positive psychology concept of savouring by examining the positive emotions savoured by non-Muslim tourists on the basis of the broaden-and-build theory, including the savouring processes used when recalling their recent halal food experiences after returning from holiday. Data were collected from 220 non-Muslim tourists using a self-administered open-ended web-based questionnaire in Amazon MTurk. More than half of the non-Muslim respondents considered themselves to be food neophiliacs, and the two main motivations for consuming halal food were to experience something new and taste. The most common positive emotions savoured by non-Muslim tourists when recalling their recent halal food experiences were joy and love. Taste, togetherness and novelty were identified as the dominant factors that intensified respondents’ savouring of their halal food experiences and can be linked to three out of four savouring processes – luxuriating, thanksgiving and marvelling.