Perception of food safety among hotels' kitchen personnel and its application in Ankara

The purpose for the research is to determine the hygiene knowledge level and application level of the hotel personnel working in the kitchen. In addition to this primary goal, knowledge levels of kitchen personnel working in hotels were questioned for kitchen equipment hygiene, personal hygiene, food hygiene and general hygiene according to their demographic characteristics. The knowledge level of the kitchen personnel working in hotels and the application of their knowledge was determined. In addition, with the information collected within the research, the difference of knowledge levels and difference in application of the knowledge have been determined for different roles (cook, service personnel, dish washer etc.) within the organization.Target population of the study was composed of four and five star Ankara hotels. A survey was conducted among 301 kitchen employees working in 17 hotels in Ankara city center. One Way Anova analysis was used in comparing of three or more groups for comparison of hygiene scores according to descriptive attributes, and t-test for independent groups was used for two groups' comparison. On one way variance analysis , post-hoc Tukey Analysis was used in order to identify differing group/groups in cases where any differencing condition existed. The difference has been found meaningful statistically within all analysis asWhen all the hotel employees were assessed according to age groups, gender, education level, working experience in current employer and training levels, no meaningful statistical differences were observed between groups along food hygiene, personal hygiene, equipment and general hygiene perception scores. When hotel workers were analyzed according to their roles, working experience and training levels, meaningful differences were observed among groups for food hygiene, personal hygiene, equipment and total hygiene (food hygiene , personal hygiene, and equipment hygiene) scores.Key Words : Food safety , hygiene, hotel businesses