What matters most? Factors influencing international students’ satisfaction towards cafeteria foods

The Malaysian government is focusing on developing education tourism to boost tourist arrivals.Apart from acquiring education, students’ well-being in terms of food-consumption is a major fragment in a student’s life. This paper puts emphasize on evaluating tourist resources as a component of tourism development through identification of international students’ demands on food and how the foodservice suppliers should adjust to this. In particular, it will address international students’ satisfaction towards cafeteria foods in university foodservice in Malaysia via extracting the salient factors that matters most in their evaluation of quality food and food price. Qualitative approach via open ended comment cards were distributed among 55 international students during April 2013 and content analysis was done on the feedbacks gathered. Based on the findings, majority of international students were dissatisfied with the taste, nutrition, hygiene, temperature, freshness and price of the food served by the cafeterias. This study will add to the under-researched area of foodservice sector academically and practically via identification of factors which international students’ think are important as quality food with acceptable price towards their satisfaction in cafeteria dining. This will benefit the university foodservice operators in providing best practices as one of the tourism suppliers in enhancing tourism development