Tourism Commons^™

Farmers's Relationship With Hospitality Businesses: A Preliminary Study, Abel Alonso

Abel D Alonso

Numerous advantages exist for farmers as food producers and for restaurateurs as food sellers to be engaged in business relationships. While in many situations such relationships would seem a very “natural” process that would also benefit consumers, to date very little research has been conducted in examining the extent to which farmers are engaged in such relationships. The present paper aims to explore these areas from the farmers’ perspective. Semi-structured telephone interviews and two on-site face-to-face interviews were conducted among 30 farm owners/operators in the state of Alabama, USA. A very weak relationship was noticed between farms and hotels/restaurants in …