CULINARY TOURISM AND LOCAL FOOD HERITAGE IN MUMBAI: TOURIST PREFERENCES, RESTAURANT STRATEGIES, AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS

Abstract

This paper discusses how culinary tourism and regional food culture in Mumbai intersect through the prism of tourist preferences, the activities of restaurants, and the economic outcomes. The main aim was to determine what tourists like about food and what they dislike about food, their interest in Maharashtrian food, whether the restaurants in Maharashtra serve regional foods in the menus or not, and whether the restaurants are facing any challenges in promoting local food. The research was based on a mixed-methods approach, where data was collected on 200 tourists, addressing them through a survey, 15 restaurant managers in interviews, and content analysis of 50 restaurant menus. Quantitative results were achieved by applying SPSS v27 based on chi-squares, t-tests, ANOVA, correlation, and regression data interpretation whereas the qualitative results were explained using NVivo 14 through thematic analysis. There also were results that 70 percent of tourists liked Indian vegetarian food and local cuisine enthusiasm was strong (mean score = 7.6). Menus only offered 34 percent dishes of Maharashtrian cuisine and 60 percent of restaurants considered inadequate coaching of chefs as a key obstacle. The economic potential of local food promotion was also indicated by the fact that tourist enthusiasm was a large predictor of repeat visitation ( β = 0.58, R² = 0.37, p < 0.01).