Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
D. Mohamad & S.I. Omar
Sustainable Tourism Research Cluster, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
B. Mohamed
School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
ABSTRACT: Tourism industry is complex and contested. As a sector that provides benefits in the form
of economic development, tremendously and rapidly, the tourism sector has been long studied from vari-
ous aspects, especially factors related to travel motivations. This paper centers on the relationship between
gender and travel motivations to Penang Island, in relation to food and cultural aspects. As a field, both
food and cultural tourism sectors are gaining in importance and in popularity. The findings reported by
this paper were based on 801 international responses collected during the four-month data collection
(August to November 2012). Results indicate that gender plays an unimportant role in impacting the
travel motivations in addition insignificance of income in relation to preferences of food services pro-
pensity. Nevertheless, interesting results were observed for the travel motivations' variables, in terms of
tourism experience and the image portrayed.
Keywords
:
International tourist, Penang Island, travel motivation, gender, food, cultural aspects
1 INTRODUCTION
time, space and means. “culinary tourism is a space
of contact and encounter, negotiation and transac-
tion, whether at home or abroad” (para. 3)
Shenoy's (2005) finding demonstrates the posi-
tive relationship between gender and food tourism,
of which, further enhances the credibility of food
tourism in developing the tourism industry. Given
its ability in promoting the local cuisine as one of
the enjoyable tourism activities, food tourism has
received the international recognition as it diversi-
fies the tourism experience, dynamically and crea-
tively (World Tourism Organization, 2012).
On the other hand, culture aspect has been
employed as one of tourism products as early as
the end of the 20th century (Organisation for Eco-
nomic Co-Operation and Development, 2009),
due to the demand and supply chain. Compare
to food tourism, culture and tourism have been
enjoying a long tradition as culture is a product
that begins with a snapshot of people, their life-
style and beliefs (United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
2004). Simply stated, other than communicating
with people, culture can be experienced through
observation. Although one's culture may be have
similar to one another, the art of experiencing and
enjoying culture lies in the form of one's ability
in interpreting the connectivity between their cul-
tural resources and the host community's cultural
resources (Failte Ireland, undated).
Publicly known, tourism sector serves the purpose
of travel, entertainment, education and business;
where all these can be further encapsulated into
expectation and perception. As the tourism sec-
tor grows and expands, tourism sectors that are
highly depending on limited tourism resource are
putting notable effort in brandishing their tourism
products. While this suggests that much have been
achieved, this also indirectly translated into much
more needed to be done. It is therefore, the tourism
operators are in urgent pursuit of providing tour-
ism products that offer distinctiveness.
In line with this, the tourism industry envisages
the potential holds by gastronomy in meeting the
tourists' expectation and demand. Gastronomy
or else known as a food tourism has been receiv-
ing attention from tourism stakeholders where,
according to USA Today (2014), food tourism was
first coined by the growing demand for local food
and wine tourism that was first made famous back
in 2001. Meanwhile, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (2003)
illustrates the relationship between food and tour-
ism as follows:
Even when food is not the main focus of travel,
one must eat, regardless of whether or not a memo-
rable experience is the goal. Indeed, the tourism and
hospitality industries design experiences, including
culinary ones, within the constraints of the tourist's
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