A Seminar on Gastronomic Event Loyalty
Continuing PUA’s Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management’s interest in supporting and encouraging scientific research activities and international publication, the Faculty’s Graduate Studies and Scientific Research Committee hosted a seminar presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tamer El-Sawy.
The seminar addressed a published research paper entitled: “From Flavor to Fidelity: Exploring Satisfaction’s Mediating Role in Gastronomic Event Loyalty” The research was published in the International Journal of Event and Festival Management (Emerald Publishing), in collaboration with international researchers from prestigious foreign universities in Spain.
Attendees from faculty members and teaching assistants discussed the research methodology and PLS-SEM model, and results demonstrated that satisfaction plays a strong mediating role between event engagement and loyalty to it, with differences in local visitors’ behavior in Egypt where collective identity and cultural pride predominate.
This study is the first to test these relationships in the context of local gastronomic events in a developing country, presenting an integrated theoretical framework combining theories of: experiential consumption, community attachment, and expectation confirmation/disconfirmation.
Final Recommendations and Proposals
Discussions concluded with the following recommendations:
- Encouraging international collaboration between faculty researchers and their counterparts abroad, with focus on gastronomic tourism and events fields.
- Prioritizing publication in Emerald journals and other major international publishing houses, and benefiting from accumulated expertise in data analysis (PLS-SEM).
- Conducting future studies addressing other tourism sectors (heritage, museums, medical tourism) using the same methodological framework.
- Developing local gastronomic events based on study findings, with focus on social and cultural dimensions, not just food quality.
