Food and culture in tourism: Where does Penang Island stand?

Tourism industry is complex and contested. As a sector that provides benefits in the form of economic development, tremendously and rapidly, the tourism sector has been long studied from various aspects, especially factors related to travel motivations. This paper centers on the relationship between gender and travel motivations to Penang Island, in relation to food and cultural aspects. As a field, both food and cultural tourism sectors are gaining in importance and in popularity. The findings reported by this paper were based on 801 international responses collected during the four-month data collection (August to November 2012). Results indicate that gender plays an unimportant role in impacting the travel motivations in addition insignificance of income in relation to preferences of food services propensity. Nevertheless, interesting results were observed for the travel motivations' variables, in terms of tourism experience and the image portrayed.