Citation: Pilis, W.; Kabus, D.; Miciula, I. Food Services in the Tourism Industry in Terms of Customer Service Management: The Case of Poland. Sustainability 2022, 14, 6510. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116510 Academic Editor: J. Andres Coca-Stefaniak Received: 15 April 2022 Accepted: 23 May 2022 Published: 26 May 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Food Services in the Tourism Industry in Terms of Customer Service Management: The Case of Poland Wieslaw Pilis 1 , Dominik Kabus 2 and Ireneusz Miciula 3, * 1 Faculty of Health Sciencest, Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa, 42-200 Cz ˛ estochowa, Poland; w.pilis@ujd.edu.pl 2 Faculty of Law and Economics, Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa, 42-200 Cz ˛ estochowa, Poland; d.kabus@ujd.edu.pl 3 Department of Sustainable Finance and Capital Markets, Institute of Economics and Finance, University of Szczecin, 71-101 Szczecin, Poland * Correspondence: ireneusz.miciula@usz.edu.pl Abstract: The catering market in Poland, especially in such areas as the Old Town in Gda´ nsk, is con- stantly developing, and in recent years there has been a great development in gastronomic offerings; therefore, the potential in this sector is significant. The gastronomic services market in Gda´ nsk is subject to segmentation due to the diversity of consumer needs and the location of the outlets. New points are constantly appearing on the gastronomic map of this historical part of Tri-City, where every tourist, regardless of the adopted form of tourism, can satisfy his or her needs without any problems. The authors aimed to analyse the impact of catering services on the tourism industry. In particular, the study is an attempt to identify the functioning of the contemporary culinary market and the conditions for the development of catering services and to describe the forms of enterprises providing this service. The variety of aspects of the research subject matter, oscillating around the main objective, made it necessary to formulate the following research hypotheses: first hypothesis (H1)—catering services influence the management of the tourism industry; second hypothesis (H2)—the tourist is the main determinant shaping demand; third hypothesis (H3)—the tourist contributes to benefits in the sphere of supply. The research tool was two structured, short survey questionnaires used to verify the hypothesis. The survey was conducted during the summer of 2018. The survey involved 20 restaurateurs from the Old Town in Gda´ nsk and 438 random tourists over 15 years old. The survey of tourists can be characterised as randomised focus groups. The questionnaire addressed to owners of catering establishments was a representative survey. The implication of research carried out among representatives of the tourism segment is the development of a foodservice market based on a marketing strategy that takes into account the specific needs of consumers and the constant monitoring of market behaviour in order to keep up with the changes that occur in it. Keywords: economy; tourism; service management; food; gastronomy; customer service 1. Introduction The modern economy is systemic, regulated by individual markets, which includes both private entities, as well as enterprises and public institutions that are supposed to ensure that the needs of a specific customer are met [1]. The economy in this branch covers three basic sectors—agriculture, industrial, and service [2], and all activities carried out in a specific region (regional economy), country (national economy), and throughout the world (global economy) [3]. The management of these sectors is carried out in order to create a wide variety of values and services that respond to the needs of individual consumers [4]. The paper presents a cognitive problem of the classification and explication type. The theoretical verification of the research hypothesis was carried out with the use of the method of scientific cognition, the basis of which was Polish and foreign compact Sustainability 2022, 14, 6510. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116510 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability