Local Indonesian Food in the Eyes of Domestic Tourists: Culinary and Destination Experiences on Behavioral Intentions

Food is an essential element of tourism. Tourists visit tourism destinations in search for the destination experience as well as the culinary experience. Indonesia which is rich of various kinds of local traditional food in each of the tourist destination place has become an attraction for the domestic tourists to visit different tourist destination places to enjoy both the destination experience and the local food. There have been many previous studies discussing the concept of experience quality and tourist satisfaction in the context of culinary tourism; however, these variables have not been linked to destination experience. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of culinary experience quality on destination experience satisfaction in Indonesia, with culinary experience satisfaction as a mediating variable. The respondents of this study include 401 domestic tourists who travelled to one of the four gastronomy destinations of Denpasar, Solo, Bandung and Yogyakarta participated in the survey. The findings showed that the positive culinary experience of domestic tourists in Indonesia significantly influenced overall destination experience satisfaction, which in turn, led to positive behavioural intentions. Moreover, the finding also showed that food is the most influential factor in creating the culinary experience of the domestic tourists.