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Over half of the annual guests at Swedish hotels are supplied by the corporate sector. These guests are made up of individuals who travel for meetings, conferences, or presentations as a part of their job. Access to meals while travelling is essential and introduces added complexity to the business travellers’ everyday lives. These meals, and the pattern in which they are consumed, are part of the individual traveller’s personal and group identities. Therefore, the aim of this article is to study if business travellers deviate from their habitual meal patterns and if so - what changes they make. To further the understanding of this group’s meal patterns, a questionnaire was created and distributed. It was answered by 538 self-identified business travellers. These business travellers were made up of three groups – solo travellers, group travellers, and individuals who travelled both in groups as well as alone. Pearson’s chi-squared test was used to analyse differences in actions related to the meal pattern between groups. The analysis showed that changes in the meal pattern did occur in some instances. However, the majority of the business travellers adhered to their habitual meal pattern while adjusting their behaviour depending on the time of day. Managers of catering suppliers gaining insight into the meal habits of business travellers could help to ease an otherwise stressful situation by supplying meals, as a context, that fit with the business travellers’ habitual patterns and meal contexts.

Business travellers make up a large part of the customer base for the Swedish hospitality industry, accounting for 54% of the occupancy rate of Swedish hotels in 2018. Yet, very little is known about their meal habits while being at the destination of a business trip. This, even though the handling of meals in an environment that is less known to the traveller could add to the complexity of everyday life. Therefore, this study is aimed to explore actions performed by business travellers at the destination of travel as part of their meal practice with the purpose of elucidating the meal habits of this group. The research is theoretically framed within the context of social identity theory and social practice theory. A questionnaire was filled out by 538 Swedish business travellers recruited by means of self-sampling; 77% of the respondents were men, and 77% were above 45 years of age. The majority of the respondents, 67%, travelled over 50 days per annum, and 59% were located in the highest income quartile. The analysis of the data generated a general overview of the actions performed in relation to the meal, while also showing differences in actions taken based on income and gender. Women were significantly more price conscious than men and to a larger extent used technical assistance to find somewhere to eat. When travelling alone they also reported eating faster than at home and bringing back food and eat at the hotel room more often than men did. Men, in contrast, exhibited an inclination towards seeking social contexts to insert themselves in during dinners when travelling alone, as to be able to eat together with other people. The, relatively, lower income group showed more price consciousness as well as used the help of technical assistance to find somewhere to eat.

Since restaurateurs can benefit by analyzing the production of meals, particularly with the dominant framework for meal experiences, the five aspects meal model (FAMM), this study examined FAMM’s relevance as an analytical tool for understanding meal production via field observations and interviews in eight small restaurants in a rural destination in Sweden. Results showed that FAMM’s aspect of the management control system and the factor of time are critical to the entire meal production process in restaurants. This article closes with a discussion of FAMM’s usefulness as a qualitative checklist for restaurateurs.

This exploratory article examines the role of the meal experience in the context of the postmodern conditions of marketing as well as customer value emergence and suggests a novel perspective on the commercial meal experience as being customer based. It focuses on how value is idiosyncratically formed, for the customer, based on what the customer experiences. The article draws attention to the need of changing perspectives from the producer to the customer to gain understanding on how value emerges for the customer within the commercial meal experience. It also presents the need for a dynamic understanding of the meal experience and argues that the current paradigm of understanding the meal is lacking due to it being an a priori construct.

This paper contributes to research on restaurant work, which plays an important role in culinary arts research. The aim of this study was to make visible and elucidate the daily work practices in eight small restaurants in a seasonal tourist destination on the Southeast coast of Sweden. The central methods used were observations and participant observations and interviews, along with an e-mail questionnaire and examination of published information concerning all the restaurants. By means of practice theory, three central elements were used to identify and understand the configuration of the activities involved in daily work in small seasonal restaurants. These three elements, knowledge/competence, technologies/materiality and creation of meaning, formed four practices. The practices identified in this study were managing time and seasons; planning, strategising and controlling; knowing and having skills; and dreams and lifestyle. The conclusion of the study indicates that small restaurant practices may be conflicting, as they involve an extremely time-consuming workload, vague planning and lingering knowledge growth in contrast to the ideas of creativity and development that are a part of the restaurant owners’ dreams and lifestyle.

Restaurant experiences are an important part of a destination’s service offer and restaurants play an important role for visitors’ well-being. High quality of food is essential, but feeling welcome, meeting skillful employees and enjoying the atmosphere are likewise important. Visitors’ experiences related to eating out are multifaceted and could be related to many aspects such as traveling for leisure or in business, meals as social and cultural events and eating out as an urban experience.

This project aims to regard the customer as a person who actively integrates different opportunities in order to create value in a specific context, a customer-dominant-view.

The purpose of this project is to examine drivers of business travellers’ resource integrating activities during their stay at a destination with a special focus on eating out.

Methodological an ethnographical inspired field study approach will be applied, in dialogue with a multidisciplinary research group and representatives from the industry.

The results will illustrate customers’ value creation and resource integration processes related to eating out activities, and give a holistic understanding of visitors’ drivers, interactions and activities regarding eating out. The results will contribute to the development of companies as well as destinations with regard to eating out and meals.

Introduction: Restaurant experiences are an important part of a destination’s service offer andrestaurants in their turn play an important role for visitors’ and for inhabitants’ well-being.Naturally high quality of food is essential for a restaurant customer’s experience, however thisis not enough. Often feeling welcome, meeting skillful employees and enjoying the atmosphereare as important as the food served. From a destination perspective it is especially interestingto understand how visitors create value during their stay. From a restaurant and hotel company point of view it is especially interesting to further understand how their customers create value during their entire stay with a special focus on eating out. In order to understand visitors’ value creating processes during their stay at a destination it is important to know the customers’ own world of processes, activities and value creation seen from the customer perspective. These processes and activities are partly invisible for companies and destinations. Compared to earlier studies where the customer is regarded as a passive receiver of solutions, a goods-dominant-view (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), this project aims to regard the customer as a person who actively integrates different opportunities in order to create value in a specific context, a customer-dominant-view (Vargo & Lusch, 2004, 2008). 

Literature review: Value is always created in an interaction between an offering and a customer, and the interaction is relative, interactive and depends on the customers’ preferences (Holbrook, 2006). The customer is in the center of attention, as an active thinking and reflecting individual, determining the own customer value, which is realized through customer experiences according to Holbrook (2006, 1999) or as value in context according to Vargo and Lusch (2008). During value creation all actors act as resource integrators, by actively using their personal resources (knowledge and skills) in continuous interactions in order to enhance their personal consumption experience (Baron & Harris, 2008; Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008; Vargo & Lusch, 2004). Resources could according to Arnould et al. (2006) be distinguished as social, cultural, physical, operant (knowledge and skills) and economic operand resources (objects and physical spaces). The active role of customers as participants in the service production/delivery indicates customers’ knowledge and skills playing an important role. 

Visitors’ experiences related to eating out are characterized by contact-intensive services (Shostack, 1985), including many activities and interactions. Visitors’ eating ou texperiences are multifaceted and could be related to many aspects such as traveling for leisure or in business, meals as social and cultural events and eating out as an urbane xperience (Bell & Valentine, 1997; Finkelstein, 1989; Jonsson & Pipping Ekström, 2011; Morgan, Watson, & Hemmington, 2008; Mäkelä, 2009). Also Walter (2011) highlights the social and physical dimension of restaurant experiences. Furthermore Mathisen (2013) examines how tourism firms act as co-creators of value in tourist activities with a special focus on story telling. Sundqvist (2015) has examined travellers experiences related to perceived authenticity of a meal context from a sociological perspective. His study shows that individuals’ cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) is the main influence of how they perceive meal contexts.

Many aspects of tourist and eating out experiences have been examined, however there is still a need for research of eating out experiences as a part of a visitors’ stay at a destination. Especially a holistic view of visitors eating out experiences during their whole stay at a destination from the visitor’s point of view is of interest. 

The aim of the study: The purpose of this study is to examine drivers of visitors’ resource integrating activities during their stay at a destination with a special focus on eating out. The focus of this study will be the business travellers’ perspective.  

Methods & material: Methodologically the study will follow the recommendations made in earlier innovation research related to tourism, hospitality and service indicating a need for approaches that facilitate holistic and multi-disciplinary approaches (Hjalager, 2010). Tronvåll, Brown et al.(2011) recommend studies of customers’ service experiences to be based on multi-methodfield studies with observations as an important part. This project will apply an (n)ethnographical inspired field study approach, including observations, interviews and field documentation (Kozinets, 2002; Van Maanen, 2006). The design of the empirical study will, besides research literature, be based on the outcome from the workshops with the multidisciplinary research group and representatives from the industry. Data will be analysed in an inductive approach according to constant comparative principles (Glaser & Strauss,1967).

Expected main results: The results will illustrate the visitors’ stay in a holistic way with the customer experience and value creation in focus. Furthermore the drivers beyond visitors’ actions, interactions and activities regarding eating out, which describe customers’ resource integration processes related to eating out activities. The results will also contribute to the development of companies as well as destinations with regard to eating out and meals. 

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to analyze and describe the drivers in the physical environment that help to form customers' service experiences at restaurants, as described by customers in their own words.

Design/methodology/approach – A critical incident study was conducted through 122 interviews resulting in a total of 195 favourable and unfavourable customer service experiences in restaurants. Data were analysed inductively in accordance with the principles of constant comparison and the results were interpreted by regarding customers as creators of their own meaning.

Findings – The physical environment has both a functional and a social dimension and it is an important driver of customer service experiences in restaurants. Customers interact with these drivers individually and create their own meanings and value expressed as feelings, thoughts, imagination and behaviour.

Research limitations/implications – The results develop the tenets of service-dominant logic by offering some insight into customers' own logic in value creation and the design of the physical restaurant environment.

Practical implications – Customers actively construct their own individual meanings from the physical environment, throughout the whole service process, indicating that the customer service experience is not controlled solely by restaurant management. As some drivers are only experienced in their absence or when they are noticeably disturbing or pleasing, it is important for managers to understand these dimensions in order to treat them appropriately. Both favourable and unfavourable service experiences need to be considered.

Originality/value – The physical environment can be described as a dynamic driver which includes a social dimension and customers are regarded as active creators of their own experience.