Determination of food safety perception of kitchen staff working in hotels in Belek region and their perspectives towards food engineers

In the accommodation sector, where tourism is at the forefront, the priority is to ensure a high level of guest satisfaction. Hotels offer various services to their guests. Factors such as food and beverage service, cleaning service and entertainment service are among the services that affect guest satisfaction the most. One of the most important among these services is the food and beverages consumed. Food and beverage services, which are an important part of guest satisfaction, therefore play an important role. Healthy and reliable food and beverages offered by the hotel business to its guests strengthen guest satisfaction and brand image. The basis of providing reliable food and beverage service is to ensure food safety. In order to provide reliable food service, the level of knowledge and food safety perceptions of employees on this issue gain importance. Ensuring food safety in hotel establishments is supported by the presence of food engineers. Trainings given by food engineers are very important in terms of food safety inspections and awareness. The aim of this thesis study is to measure and interpret the food safety perception of kitchen staff in hotels and their perspectives on food engineers. It was investigated and evaluated whether the perception of food safety and the perspective of food engineers are related to demographic variables. The scope of the research consists of kitchen staff working in hotels in Antalya Belek region. In the study, the survey method was selected as the data collection technique by using quantitative research, 431 kitchen workers were interviewed, and the data obtained were analysed using the SPSS programme. The validity and reliability of the food safety perception and food engineer perspective scales were measured by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Items that violated the validity of the scale were removed from the question items. Skewness and kurtosis analyses were performed and it was determined that the scale showed a normal distribution. Hypotheses related to the questionnaire study were determined and statistical analyses were performed. T test and Anova test were used as statistical analyses. Correlation values between the scales were measured. As a result of this study, it was analysed and interpreted whether there is a significant difference between the demographic variable and the food safety perception scale, the food engineers' perspective scale and the sub-dimensions of the scales. It was observed that there were significant differences depending on the age, kitchen department, professional position and whether the employees received food safety training or not. It was observed that adherence to traditionalism increased as the age of the employees increased, the perception of food safety and the perspective of food engineers increased with food safety training, and the perception of food safety did not change depending on gender. It was determined that employees had a positive perspective towards food engineers regardless of professional supervision. Keywords: Tourism, Food Safety, Food Engineer, Hotel, Kitchen