Resumo

SANTOS, Joana Teresa; PINTO, Patrícia Susana Lopes Guerrilha dos Santos  e  GUERREIRO, Manuela. CONTRIBUTION OF THE GASTRANOMIC EXPERIENCE TO ENHANCING TOURISTS’ EXPERIENCE. PERSPECTIVES OF A STUDY IN THE ALGARVE, PORTUGAL. Tur., Visão e Ação [online]. 2016, vol.18, n.3, pp.498-527. ISSN 1983-7151.  http://dx.doi.org/10.14210/rtva.v18n2.p498-527.

It is generally accepted that the cultural and historical heritage of tourist destinations are important sources for designing differentiated and attractive tourism products. Gastronomy, one of the most important cultural resources, is now recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In addition, gastronomy has a recognized ability to stimulate unique and distinctive tourist experiences. The aims of this paper are to characterize the gastronomic experiences of tourists during their stay in a mature tourist destination, and to determine the role of these experiences on overall satisfaction and loyalty to the destination. The research setting is the Algarve, one of the main “sun, sea and sand” tourism destinations in Europe and the top tourism destination in Portugal. A survey was conducted of 384 tourists who passed through Faro International Airport. The results, essentially quantitative, were obtained using the software program Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The software program NVivo was used to analyze the open-ended questions. This work contributes to the study of gastronomy as a complementary tourism product in a destination primarily associated with the sun, sea and sand. In particular, it demonstrates that gastronomy plays a leading role in the destination offer, and increasingly, provides a source of pleasure and cultural enrichment.

Palavras-chave : Cultural tourism; Gastronomic experience; Satisfaction.

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