Analysis of the Quality of Service in Gastronomic Festivals

Abstract

Gastronomic festivals have become a pathway to promoting the gastronomy and culture of a tourist destination. However, there is no taxonomy for evaluating the quality of services in these types of festivals. For this reason, the present study aimed to propose a service quality evaluation model applicable to gastronomic festivals based on a review of commonly used models. The research was carried out at the Raíces Gastronomic Festival held in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 2018. Six hundred valid questionnaires were obtained, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was applied to identify the dimensions of the items. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to validate the proposed model. As a result, we obtained a questionnaire to evaluate the quality of services in gastronomic festivals based on tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, and adequacy dimensions. These findings contribute to expanding the academic literature on food festivals and provide a questionnaire to measure the service quality of this type of event.