A study on food safety perception of foreign tourists visiting Turkey

Food safety has become one of the leading issues for both consumers and producers today because of the food-borne diseases. The increasing awareness and worries of consumers about the food safety push the governments and food producers to pay more attention to this issue. The aim of this study is to determine the perception level of tourists visiting Turkey in food safety manner. Thus, for this purpose, a survey study conducted covering 524 foreign-origin tourists.The survey is consisted of 5 parts and 79 questions. The first part is including questions measuring the participants? information level about food safety. On the second part, there are statements determining the level of effect caused by travel choice due to the food safety and reason of travel. In the third part of survey, there are questions to measure the level of food safety perception of participants about restaurants both inside and outside of their hotels where they reside in their own countries and in Turkey. The forth part is comprised of expressions aiming to measure participants? level of food safety perception about Turkey and restaurants both inside and outside the hotels where they stay in Turkey. The six questions relating to the demographic assessments (gender, age, education, nationality, travel frequency abroad and the number of visits to Turkey) can be found on the fifth part.In the study, it is aimed to find out perception level of foreign tourists visiting Turkey about their food safety conception in Turkey. SPSS 17.0 statistics software was used to test whether there is significant difference between the determined perception level and participants? demographic specifications.At the end of the research, it is found that while the general food safety perception toward sources in Turkey is positive, arithmetic hotel mean is higher than general arithmetic mean of Turkey. Moreover, participants receive brief information about the destination country and destination country?s food safety is also play important role (together with general security of the country, water safety, service quality, sea-sun-beaches, cultural richness, affordable prices, hospitality and easy access) while participants are making their holiday decisions.