Examining the impacts of foreign businesses on the travel experiences of domestic tourists in the developing countries' destinations: The case of İstanbul

The food and beverage businesses are one of the essential businesses that must be found in a region to start and sustain tourism activities. However, expectations of post-modern tourists' from food and beverage businesses have changed due to changing tourist behaviors. The most important value that post-modern tourists demanded from food and beverage businesses has been the dining experience in post-modern age. Such that visiting food and beverage businesses that offer special experiences has become one of the main travel motivations of post-modern tourists. In parallel with the increasing importance of travel experience, the number of studies in tourism literature has also increased. In this sense, most of the studies in the extant literature mainly focused on the experiences of foreign tourists from local food and beverage businesses. However, dining experiences of domestic tourists which get from foreign food and beverage businesses have been largely ignored. For this reason, the thesis aims to fill this gap by exploring the dining experiences that offered domestic tourists by foreign food and beverage businesses. Field research was carried out by face-to-face interviews with domestic tourists visiting Istanbul and get service from foreign food and beverage businesses. By this means, the types of dining experiences that domestic tourists get from foreign food and beverage businesses and the factors affecting their experiences have been clarified by the support of empirical findings.