Culinary tourism in Indonesia: The dining experiences of international visitors

Abstract

The promotion of food and associated dining opportunities has been widely used by DMOs as a pull factor to enhance destination attractiveness and stimulate visitation. Indonesia can potentially benefit from a culinary tourism focus in order to strengthen its appeal amongst international tourists. The geographic and cultural diversity of the destination has endowed the national cuisine with variety and taste and local foods offer a potentially unique point of differentiation. If destination authorities are to capitalise on such attributes, it is important for them to understand what tourists expect and value when dealing with food-related products or services. The literature has indicated that there have been few studies on culinary tourism and on tourist consumption of local food in destination settings area. In addition, much of the existing food tourism literature is Western-oriented and may require revisions to the findings if they are to be applied beyond the confines of the developed world. The present working paper aims to investigate the experiences which international visitors encounter at different stages of food consumption during visits to Indonesia, with a view to gaining an improved understanding of the role of Indonesian food in the tourism context. The visitor dining experiences will be investigated over three stages - pre, during and post-dining using a mixed method approach.