Abstract:
Food being one of the basic human needs, it is considered as one of the important factors
which creates a memorable experience for a tourist. Therefore, while traveling from one
place to another place tourists require to access food and beverages. Meanwhile, due to
food neophobia tourists usually tend to consume international food and beverages when
they are on traveling. In this context, the present study aimed to identify the foreign
tourists’ perception of the quality of the international food and beverages available in
destination food outlets in Sri Lanka. The research site selected was Ella which is very
popular among tourists. The sample of the study was 100 foreign tourists who consumed
the food and beverages at food outlets available in Ella during their stay in Sri Lanka. A
self-administrative questionnaire was purposively distributed to collect the data from the
respondents. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis
were used to analyse the data with the support of SPSS. The finding of the research
elaborated that tourists almost satisfied with the existing quality of international food and
beverages and there was a strong positive relationship between food quality and the
tourists’ perception of international food and beverages. According to the regression
analysis, the appearance of the food and the wholesomeness showed a positive significant
impact on tourists’ perception of international food and beverages. Hence, attractiveness
and the cleanliness of food and beverages should be improved to attract more tourists to
food outlets. Further, the present study only dealt with the tourists’ perspective and it
would be useful to investigate the perspective of service providers on the quality of
international food and beverages available in destination food outlets.
Keywords: Food quality, Tourists perception, International food and beverages,
Destination food outlets, Foreign tourists
