The Characteristics of Dining-out Customers at Ski Resorts in South Korea

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of dining-out customers by their behaviors based on geographical regions and visiting days in relation to restaurant attraction at ski resorts in Korea. The data were collected from six ski resorts. Three of the ski resorts were located in Kyunggi Province close to a metropolitan area, namely Seoul. The other three resorts were located in Kangwon Province, which is considered to be distant from the Seoul metropolitan area. A total of 599 usable questionnaires were utilized in the data analysis. Descriptive statistics and a cross tabulation analysis with chi square were used to examine the demographic characteristics of the respondents and the significant differences between geographical regions as well as between weekdays and weekends. The responding customers consisted of 57.3% (n=343) males and 42.7% (n=256) females. With respect to age, 15.5% were less than 20 yr., 44.6% were $20{\sim}30$ yr., and 28.0% were $30{\sim}40$ yr. The most recognizable occupations were student (32.9%) followed by office worker (33.2%). Twenty-seven percent of the respondents had less than one year of skiing experience and the majority (32.9%) had more than $1{\sim}3$ yr of experience. The major findings obtained from this study include statistically significant differences in the customers' demographical characteristics of age, occupation, skiing experience, and residential area according to the geographical regions of Kyunggi Province and Kangwon Province (p<0.05). All six of the customers' behavioral attributes, including transportation, reason to visit, staying days, purpose of visit, spending expenses, and usage of discount programs, showed significant differences between geographical groups (p<0.05). Finally, restaurant attraction was associated with the purpose of visiting and spending expenses by customers at the ski resorts (p<0.001).