Evaluation of general knowledge levels and gastronomy tourism perceptions of tourist guides in creating gastronomy routes

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of tourist guides' gastronomy knowledge levels and gastronomy tourism perceptions on creating gastronomy routes. The population of the research consists of tourist guides who are registered to 13 different tourist guide chambers in Turkey and actively work in the tourism sector. The purposive sampling method of non-probability sampling was used in the research. The questionnaire technique was used as the data collection method in the research. During the data collection process of the research, 432 surveys were obtained by applying an online survey to active tourist guides. The obtained data were analyzed in the SPSS and LISREL programs, and in addition to descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, structural equation model, independent sample t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the data. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the gastronomy knowledge level of tourist guides and their perceptions of gastronomy tourism positively affect the creation of gastronomy routes. The results obtained were evaluated and suggestions that were expected to contribute to the literature were developed.