Abstract
This thesis examines how community-based homestay tourism has influenced the host community’s local food culture in a developing country context, specifically in Nepal. Local food cultures keep changing, and tourism has been shown to influence such dynamics. Community-based tourism focuses on intense host-guest interaction experiences, often exposing various tangible and intangible aspects of the host food culture to tourists. There is an increasing body of literature dedicated to food and tourism that focusses on demand perspectives. However, how tourism brings about changes in local food culture from the host perspective is not yet fully understood. In order to address this gap, research was undertaken in the Panauti Community Homestay which is located in the small town of Panauti, Nepal.
Forty-eight semi-structured interviews with members of seventeen households, as well as other relevant stakeholders, form the empirical basis of this thesis. During his three-month stay in the study area, the author also engaged in participant observation. Field notes and photos taken during such observations were an additional source of information for this research. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.
The findings suggest that tourism is an influential factor in food culture change in the host community. This research illuminates how tourism impacts on food culture go beyond the tangible aspects of food to include intangible socio-cultural aspects pertaining to the local community. Community homestay tourism has made the local cuisine more vibrant and eclectic by expanding the local food culture’s boundaries by welcoming new influences from various cuisines of the region and abroad, through food experiments and creolisation, and the revitalisation of traditional feast patterns and festive dishes. Intangible aspects of the local food culture are affected as well, including aspects of the kitchen related to social hierarchy and spirituality. Overall, the influence of tourism is nuanced and multifaceted. When host-guest interactions transgress culturally sensitive aspects of the local food culture, the host community resists them. This thesis shows that while tourism effects changes to local food cultures, it also empowers the host community to value and preserve traditions.