Evaluation of restaurant service quality in the Etaewon special tourist district of Seoul: Foreign tourist perspective

Abstract

Etaewon district in Seoul has long been one of the tourist places that foreign tourists visit the most and is also well‐known as a shopping and eating district to the foreign tourists. The Korean government has recently nominated this district as one of the eighteen special tourist districts in order to foster tourist industry in this district and provide better tourist environment for the foreign tourists and visitors for the year 2000 ASEM and 2002 World Cup Games (See Figure 1). As one of the privileges, all the restaurants in this district are allowed to operate 24‐hours a day if they want to. Despite the government's growing recognition on the importance of the restaurant industry in the special tourist district, few academic studies related to restaurant service quality in this area has been done in Korea. Therefore, there are academic research needs to investigate how foreign tourists evaluate restaurant service quality of Etaewon special tourist district.