Determination of Local Tourist’s Attitudes and Behaviors Visiting Bartın Province for Local Foods

Abstract

When we analysis today's travel behaviors, it has seen that the number of tourists whose interest of alternative tourism except 3S (sea-sand-sun) tourism is increasing day by day. Especially tourists with high education and culture are looking for something different from their own life and for this they also use modern technological tools to travel destinations which have original cultural and local characteristics. In this context, specific local foods and beverages in the region or destination have become an important attraction for tourists. When Bartın Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism data of 2017 are examined, it has seen that most of the visitors to Bartın Province were domestic tourists with 275.001 overnight stay. Because of this, the population of this research is composed of domestic tourists and also the convenience sampling method has been used in this research. It has reached 384 local tourists and interviewed with them using the survey technique. Statistical package program was used for the analysis of the data. The research results show us that the first aim of visiting Bartın Province is not the local cuisine for local tourists, they didn’t have enough knowledge about regional foods before or after visiting Bartın, The local cuisine is not included in the menu of the food and beverage enterprises is the main reason of why the local tourist are not interested to local cuisine. It also shows that the numbers of establishments that will taste these local foods are not enough in Bartın.