The Role of Local Food in Maldives Tourism - Scholarly Commons ...

Table 5. 5 Importance of using local food in marketing
N
Mean
Frequency scale
Un-important Very important
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
12 4.08 - 3 3 1 1 3 1
Tourism operators believed that since Maldives is not known for its cuisine, it is not
important to promote Maldives by using local food. Half of the experts also pointed out
that all tourism marketing so far has been focused on the natural beauty of the Maldives.
Recently Maldives has been marketed as a spa destination. The current branding of
Maldives as a romantic, relaxation and beach destination has been developed and
marketed for a considerable duration without the inclusion of any food aspects.
Probably this area has been neglected because we have been having
double digit growth in the tourism sector for a long time and the players
in the industry did not feel the need for other tools to market the
product.
Operators were asked to indicate the importance given to different types of cuisines in
the marketing and promotion of their businesses from a scale of 1 to 7 (1 is not
important at all, 7 extremely important). The responses are illustrated in Table 5.6.
Table 5. 6 Importance of different cuisines in tourism marketing
Types of cuisine
N
Mean
Frequency scale
Not important Extremely
at all important
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Italian 11 5.09 - 1 - 3 2 3 2
Mediterranean 12 5.08 - 1 - 2 5 2 2
Asian 12 5.33 - - 1 2 3 4 2
Maldivian 12 4.58 - - 4 2 2 3 1
Continental 12 5.42 - 1 1 1 2 3 4
Other 4 6.5 - - - - 1 - 3
119