Ethnic Restaurants, a Marketing Tool for Culinary Tourism? : An Exploratory Study on Relationship between Ethnic Restaurant Experience and Intention to Visit the Origin Country

As culinary tourism becomes a trend in tourism, many countries pay attention to develop the gastronomic part of the attractions in destinations. Countries such as Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea support their ethnic restaurants abroad as one of marketing strategies to promote culinary related tourism. They believe that once people try to their food in their home country, they will have more favourable attitude to the ethnic food and culture of the food origin, and once they like the food, they will eventually visit the origin country of the food. This study explored this assumption, by testing relationship between people's motivation to visit an ethnic restaurant and their intention to travel. Among ethnic restaurants, Asian restaurants were selected, and after examining the relationship between Asian restaurant visiting motivation and intention to travel, South Korea was selected as a destination for the comparison between those who had been to Korean restaurants and who had not been to among origin countries of Asian restaurants. The result shows that among motivations to visit Asian restaurants, desire to learn about something new and other cultures explains customers' intention to travel to a country. This study was conducted in UK setting