Gastronomy Tourism: Motivation, Food Image and Intention to Travel

The factors that might influence potential gastronomy tourism travellers to visit a food tourism destination are quite vague in tourism literature. This study aimed to understand the antecedents for local food consumption motivation and whether the motivation influences tourists¿ intentions to travel to a destination for local food consumption together with the culinary image of a destination. The study followed a quantitative online survey design distributed among adult participants living in Istanbul, with a resulting sample of 562 participants.The resultant model provided information regarding the personality traits related to culinary tourism and also regarding the factors that explain intention to engage in culinary tourism that may be used by individuals in the marketing and hospitality industries to assure competitiveness in the global tourism marketplace.