The role of traditional restaurants in tourist destination loyalty

The aim of this study is to examine the effect that visitor satisfaction with traditional restaurants has on perceptions of the local gastronomy, the overall image of a city and loyalty to that destination. Fieldwork has been carried out in Córdoba, a city in southern Spain famous for being a UNESCO World Heritage city and for its traditional gastronomy. The methodology used is based on structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). This paper makes a novel contribution in that no previous studies to date have explored satisfaction with traditional restaurants, with respect to the food, the service and the atmosphere. To achieve the proposed objective, a structured questionnaire has been used to find out the opinions of diners in renowned restaurants that base their cuisine on traditional dishes made with quality local ingredients. The results obtained confirm that a satisfactory experience with the food of a traditional restaurant has a positive effect on the image of the destination and the gastronomy of the place, as well as on visitors’ intentions to recommend and repeat the visit to said destination. Based on the analysis carried out, effective strategies are suggested to help manage these types of restaurants. The study provides theoretical and practical implications from a gastronomic perspective, which can enable tourism managers to employ new strategies to retain tourists visiting a city, based on increasing their post-experience satisfaction with restaurants featuring local cuisine.