Food Image and Acceptability of Local Cuisine: Exploring Culinary Tourism in Delhi

Abstract

Culinary tourism has the potential for being an essential source for destination promotion in India. One of the primay assumptions of this concept is the acceptability of local cuisine by tourists.The current paper explores this issue by trying to find the acceptability of new and local cuisine by travellers. The acceptability of local cuisine is tested via a modified Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) that scores the psychological behaviour of rejecting new or unknown food. The second part of the paper explores the ‘Food image’ of Delhi. The food image is ascertained by an empirical study on tourists using a self-administered survey. The results are analysed using descriptive statistics.