Managing restaurant attributes for destination satisfaction : what goes beyond food?

Local cuisine has increasingly become one of the crucial factors contributing to how tourists experience a destination. As such, understanding which attributes affect travelers' experience of the local food is especially important to enhance tourist satisfaction. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to determine the relative importance of different local cuisine experience attributes, as well as the perception of their performances. In doing so, Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) was conducted to assess tourists' perception. Data were collected from foreign travelers visiting Istanbul, Turkey, which is famous and well-known for its local cuisine. Furthermore, how different attributes affect destination satisfaction was analyzed via regression models. Interestingly, food-related cultural aspects and social aspects outweigh the food quality for their relative importance to travelers. Additionally, other than the physical environment, all attributes were found to contribute to tourists' satisfaction of the destination. Practical implications are provided in terms of how to promote and develop a competitive advantage by using local cuisine attributes for destination marketing.