Konya’yı Ziyaret Eden Yabancı Turistlerin Perspektifinden Gastronomi ve Gastronomi Turizmi

Abstract

Innovations and alternatives are needed to come by growing to a sustainable level in the tourism industry as well, just like in any other sectors. In today’s world where eating and regional dishes are so popular, the need for and emphasis on gastronomy have increased, which has made tourists to give importance to and take into consideration palatal delight while choosing destinations to visit. Although gastronomy seems like a new field, it dates back to 1800s and is not known well by tourists. This study has been carried out to see foreign tourists’ level of knowl-edge about national and international gastronomy, who came to visit Konya between the dates of December 7-17, 2017 for the “International Commemoration Ceremonies for Hz. Mevlana for his 744nd Anniversary”. 193 foreign tourists, who came to visit Konya and were volunteer to participate and randomly selected, participated in this research. The researchers applied a pre-prepared 9-question survey consisting of 3 sections to the tourists by using face-to-face interview technique. The data gathered were assessed via the SPSS 17.0 program with Frequence ve Chi-Square test. According to the data obtained, the correct answers the participants gave as a response to the following questions were found to be significant: “gastronomy” (p<0.01), “gastronomy tourism” (p<0.001), “the importance of gastronomy tourism within the tourism sector” (p<0.05), and “UNESCO World Gastronomy Cities” and “UNESCO Turkey Gastronomy City.” As a result, the level of knowledge about gastronomy, gastronomy tourism and culinary arts of foreign tourists coming from abroad in Konya Province is statistically significant. This study, were held oral presentations in the International Congress on Social Sciences (March 23-25, 2018 / Jerusalem).