Authenticity and festival foodservice experiences

This paper investigates how the medieval festival visitor’s foodservice experience might augment negotiated aspects of event authenticity and prompt revisitation intent. A dualistic authenticity framework is applied to relatively untested aspects of the tourist/visitor experience thus bridging the nexus between tourism, events and hospitality research. A scale to measure various authenticity dimensions of foodservice, drawn from the literature, was designed and administered at an Australian medieval festival. Results revealed significant differences between overall visitor-perceived event authenticity and the foodservice and event servicescape and hygiene factors and found associations between perceived authenticity and revisitation intentions. This research develops a practical checklist of authenticating agents of foodservice and conceptually provides further credence to recent studies advocating reconciliation between the essentialist and existentialist authenticity discourses.

► The study identifies dimensions, or agents, of perceived foodservice authenticity.
► Festival visitors differentiate between global and foodservice authenticity agents.
► Overall event authenticity is not augmented by foodservice authenticity.
► Foodservice authenticity is positively correlated with revisitation.
► Dimensions of products conveying authenticity can be valuable practitioner tools.