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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.

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.

Business travellers are a significant component of the hospitality industry and range from the managerial to the operational level of the firms they work for. These different positions come with different contextualised reasons for engaging in eating situations or meals when travelling. Research has begun to map out the activities related to those meals, although the sense-making and organisational aspects are still largely unexplored. Thus, this article aims to elucidate the organisation of business travellers’ meal practices. The study is theoretically framed within Schatzki’s social practice theory and semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine business travellers of different ages, working in different sectors, and at different levels within their firms. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. It was found that the meals were organised around, and understood through, two themes; significant social interactions and meaningful material properties, that was related to the teleoaffective, organising, structure of the practice. The interactions described in the first theme were mainly driven by how the interactions were perceived within the group the business traveller represented, as well as interactions between the group and the restaurant staff. Moreover, business travellers could find themselves in the role of acting both as a host and a guest within the same context. In the second theme, the material properties that influenced the understanding, and thus the sensemaking of the meal were focused on the physical environment, such as the interior of the restaurant, the food and drinks, as well as the economic circumstances of eating out. As illustrated through business travellers’ meals, the study mainly contributes to our understanding of the contextuality of meals as contexts and how those are experienced as good meals.