Memorable culinary tourism experiences: The role of restoration and perceived restorative environments

Vacations are highly experience-based and shaped by various tangible and intangible factors, including a destination's unique environmental attributes. At the same time, restoration and relaxation are primary motivators for travel, influencing tourism activities and contributing to tourists’ satisfaction, well-being, and behavioural intentions. The destination, with all its characteristics, is to be seen as the place where the vacation experience takes place, and the desired relaxation effects are expected to occur.
Food plays a vital role in creating memorable experiences and significantly enhances the overall holiday experience. Culinary tourism businesses must therefore focus on creating memorable experiences to strengthen competitiveness, as these experiences ultimately shape customers’ behavioural intentions and lifetime value. Understanding what makes culinary experiences successful is crucial for meeting travellers' restorative needs and optimising long-term customer value.
The main objectives of this study are 1) to examine the food marketing strategies employed by destina-tion marketing organisations (DMOs) on their official destination websites and 2) to understand the di-mensions of travellers’ culinary tourism experiences and their effect on behavioural intentions. Hereby, the mediating role of memorability, satisfaction and restoration shall be analysed. And 3) this study aims to explore the role of restorative environments in specific, perceived biodiversity as one characteristic of the environment.
Content analysis reveals that official tourism destination websites do not extensively promote culinary experiences and their environments, as well as settings that are qualified to provide restorative out-comes. However, they are primary sources of information for potential visitors, and culinary offers are a significant aspect of travel for many people.
Discussions with culinary tourism experts and travellers identified key determinants of memorable culi-nary tourism experiences that trigger the memorability of such experiences and drive guest satisfaction and potential further behaviours. When examining the role of restoration, it can be concluded that eating and drinking are viewed as highly restorative vacation activities, and culinary tourism settings appear to be highly qualified to address all aspects of restorative environments. It was also shown that outdoor, natural and biophilic designs are preferred in culinary tourism settings, and they are widely regarded as restorative. Various elements that provide a direct and indirect experience of nature enhance memora-bility and restoration.
An experiment shows that perceived biodiversity as one characteristic of a culinary tourism setting has statistically significant direct and indirect positive effects on restoration and it enhances intended behav-ioural intentions. Furthermore, it can be seen that the perceived restorative environment (PRE) mediates the effect between perceived biodiversity and restoration significantly and positively. Additionally, as both perceived benefits from nature and connectedness to nature increase, the effect of perceived bio-diversity on restoration also strengthens. Integrating biodiversity into culinary tourism contexts could therefore not only address the travellers’ restorative needs but also restore a destination in the sense of nature-positive and regenerative tourism.
Finally, quantitative survey results prove that culinary tourism experiences strongly impact behavioural outcomes. The effects of culinary tourism experiences on behaviour are also mediated through three key factors: restoration, satisfaction, and memorability. Besides, the perceived restorativeness of the environment (PRE) as a moderator enhances these effects. Given the strong direct effect of culinary tourism experiences on behaviour, emphasising high-quality and unique culinary offerings can therefore be a key strategy to enhance visitor satisfaction and encourage repeat visits and recommendations. To maximise the positive impact on behaviour, tourism providers should create culinary experiences that also enhance the sense of restoration. This can be achieved by carefully designing the environment according to PRE dimensions.