Gastronomy and Tourism: Exploring Culinary Experiences

This essay delves into the significant role of gastronomy in shaping modern tourism. It highlights how culinary experiences are becoming increasingly central to attracting tourists, replacing traditional sightseeing with a focus on unique food, culture, and traditions. The essay explores the benefits of gastronomy in tourism, including attracting niche markets, fostering sustainable practices, and driving economic growth by promoting a country's unique cultural identity. It discusses current trends such as authentic experiences, hands-on meals, and sustainable food tourism, emphasizing how these aspects contribute to a destination's appeal. The essay concludes that gastronomy is the future of tourism, urging governments and service providers to capitalize on local tourism opportunities and integrate culinary elements into their destination marketing strategies to achieve social, economic, and community development.

Running head: GASTRONOMY AND TOURISM
Gastronomy and Tourism
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1GASTRONOMY AND TOURISM
Food is an inseparable element of a culture and thus plays important part in tourism
experience (Kivela and Crotts 2006). Culinary tourism is broadly exploring the food of a
particular area or culture and keeping that as focus of tourism. Culinary tourists visits places
with the sole purpose of cultivating the food and gastronomic elements (Białogłowska n.d).
While dining out and tasting local food has always been a part of traditional tourism, the
gastronomic parts did not receive that much attention before. This essay explores the
importance and benefits of gastronomy in tourism experience, the current trends in culinary
tourism and its impact on the destination.
Experiential tourism has largely replaced the traditional forms of tourism. Tourists
now are more interested in visiting places for the unique experiences with the food, culture
and tradition rather than visiting popular tourist spots. That is why, unseen places, remote
areas and indigenous culture tourism is becoming more popular than traditional tourism
prospects (Ellis et al. 2018). Food constitutes a large part of experience for tourists as it
represents the essence and history of a particular culture. The leaders in tourism marketing
are utilizing this demand and offering tourists more gastronomic experiences through food
festivals, events, wine and food tasting ceremonies and camping experiences to attract more
customers.
The most important aspect of gastronomy in tourism is that it attracts a large number
of consumers nowadays. As people become more interested in the experience rather than
luxury, gastronomy becomes one of the most important aspect that tourists look up to. It not
only includes the food but also the experience of the food, which includes the people that
traditionally make it, the process of making it and experiencing the food in the traditional
setting, thus getting a firsthand experience about the culture itself (Çalişkan and Yilmaz
2016). Thus, including gastronomy in tourism means that there is a niche market for this kind
of tourism and it becomes easier to attract them.

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Gastronomy in tourism not only attracts niche tourists but also helps in creating a
more sustainable practice. As tourists become interested in sustainable products, hands on
experience, the local farmers, breweries and other professionals involved in the industry are
forced to source the best products (Scarpato 2003). Gastronomy also brings together large
number of professions and people and creates a more communal approach which rather lacks
in the traditional forms of tourism.
Gastronomy is an integral part of destination marketing and plays large role in the
development of tourism and economy of the country. Studies have shown that tourists
nowadays are more likely to visit a place which has established itself as a reputed location for
gastronomic tourism experience. The reason that some places are more popular than the other
is because of the awareness of the tourists about the food and culinary experience that they
will have (Sormaz et al. 2016). For example, the popularity of France nowadays is not only
because of Eiffel tower or the old charm. It is because of the wine testing experiences,
vineyard tours, exquisite French cuisine which adds to the experience of the tourists in the
backdrop of the picturesque city and countryside.
The second Global Report on Gastronomy tourism has claimed that it is basically the
future of tourism. The conference concluded that gastronomic tourism might hold the key to
sustainable tourism and the key to economic development of a country (Gaztelumendi 2012).
In countries like Japan, Italy, Spain and many others, gastronomy tourism is already quite
popular and other countries are following closely behind. The most recent global trends in
tourism are authentic experiences, sharable elements, hands on meals and sustainable food
tourism. Authentic experiences tourism includes cultural culinary experience where tourists
want to experience authentic regional dishes from Philippines, South Africa or Australian
indigenous community areas for their home made authentic food. It also includes eating from
local vendors and popular places, food stalls and food events.

3GASTRONOMY AND TOURISM
Picture perfect food and location are attracting more tourists. Thus gastronomy
tourism is focusing more on presentation and setting than traditional elements like fine dining
restaurants (Gálvez et al. 2017). Tourists are also interested in hands on experiences like
cooking classes, food tours, wine testing and wine making, cake baking ceremonies to attract
more tourists. Sustainability goals has been integrated into tourism and people are also
interested in it. Food cooked from gourmet ingredients, organically produced, travelling
through public vehicles, food sourcing tours, food processing tours are becoming well sought
out.
Gastronomy in tourism is beneficial for a country’s economic growth, sustainability,
employment and overall development. With tourism, a large amount of foreign money enters
the market, more people becomes employed as tourism increases and the supporting
infrastructures like transport, connectivity, IT and other aspects also develop (Serçek and
Serçek 2015). This increases the buying power of the people of the country and large
international brands and multinational companies enters the market because of infrastructure
development. This creates more job opportunity for almost all kinds of people and flourishes
the economy further.
Gastronomy in tourism also promotes the country’s unique culture their food
preparation style, their festivals and practices which reduces stereotyping and prejudicial
behavior among people (Fields 2003). As the tourists mingle with then locals, experience the
lives that they have and talk with them, they get the chance to get over their biases thus
creating a more close-knit world. It also attract more tourists as internet and social media
easily spreads these massages and people, being keen followers of trends, becomes interested
in experiencing the new ideas, thus creating a trend that follows.

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From the above discussion, it can be concluded that gastronomy plays and important
part of tourism and through the promotion of gastronomic tourism destination marketing can
be developed. As tourism leads to economic, social and community development, the
governments and service providers need to take this into account and develop the local
tourism opportunities. Moreover, gastronomy constitutes a large part of a culture and thus,
people travelling for such experience also are likely to engage in them. Thus, it is evident
that, gastronomy truly is the future of tourism.

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References
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Review of Physical Culture, 4(3), pp. 14-25.
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