Slow food versus fast food: A Zimbabwean case study of hotelier perspectives

Abstract

Prior to the last three years, hotels dominated the tourist food market in the resort town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. However, in recent years, fast food restaurants have begun penetrating the resort. Facing the threat of losing market share, hoteliers have been panicking and hotels are waging a war against the new entrants. Victoria Falls has thus become, to a significant extent, a ‘slow food versus fast food’ battleground. This study adopts hermeneutic phenomenology to investigate how this plays out from the viewpoints of the decision makers in this battle, namely, hotel food and beverage managers. The underlying objective is to explore how the contemporary slow food–fast food contention is enacted in an African case study context.