Am I lovin’ it? Tourists and the McDonald’s experience abroad.

Abstract

Global organisations such as McDonald’s play a part in the tourist experience not only by offering food and drink, but also by providing other informal benefits such as clean toilets, air conditioning and increasingly wifi. While their contribution to the tourist experience may go beyond the notion of “convenience”, an investigation into their influence on the tourist gaze and the impact on the perception, the otherness and the staged authenticity of the tourism product proves interesting. The purpose of this study is to assess tourist experience of McDonald’s and the ways in which they interact with and relate to its products and services whilst traveling abroad. This study used comments from internet sites located by searching for McDonald’s, tourism, abroad and visiting abroad. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo were used for the purpose of this search. Comments were sorted into main themes included convenience, detractors, authenticity, American culture and otherness. These main themes were further categorised into sub- themes and the relationships of comments between and within categories were identified and discussed. Further research is required to quantify the results of this study and broaden the scope of the study to include other global brands.