Food Tourism and Regional Development

Networks, products and trajectories

C. Michael Hall, Stefan Gössling, C. Michael Hall, Stefan Gössling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138325241
• eBook ISBN: 9781317430889
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Food tourism is a topic of increasing importance for many destinations. Seen as a means to potentially attract tourists and differentiate destinations and attractions by means of the association with particular products and cuisines, food is also regarded as an opportunity to generate added value from tourism through local agricultural systems and supply chains and the local food system.

From a regional development perspective this book goes beyond culinary tourism to also look at some of the ways in which the interrelationships between food and tourism contribute to the economic, environmental and social wellbeing of destinations, communities and producers. It examines the way in which tourism and food can mutually add value for each other from the fork to the plate and beyond. Looking at products, e.g. cheese, craft beer, noodles, wine; attractions, restaurants and events; and diverse regional examples, e.g. Champagne, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Margaret River, southern Sweden, and Tuscany; the title highlights how clustering, networking and the cultural economy of food and tourism and foodscapes adds value for regions. Despite the attention given to food, wine and culinary tourism no book has previously directly focused on the contribution of food and tourism in regional development. This international collection has contributors and examples from almost every continent and provides a comprehensive account of the various intersections between food tourism and regional development.

This timely and significant volume will inform future food and tourism development as well as regional development more widely and will be valuable reading for a range of disciplines including tourism, development studies, food and culinary studies, regional studies, geography and environmental studies.

Part I
Introduction

1
From food tourism and regional development to food, tourism and regional development

Themes and issues in contemporary foodscapes

C. Michael Hall and Stefan Gössling

Introduction

Food is a major research focus in tourism and hospitality. This, of course, should not be surprising given that all tourists have to eat and that food service and provision is a core element of hospitality. However, since the 1980s, interest in the inter-relationships between food and tourism has grown from issues of provision and experience to the tourist to the wider contributions that tourist demand for food may play in the wider economy. These developments did not occur in isolation and can be understood in relation to two main reasons: first, concerns about the extent of economic and employment losses in many destinations, especially in developing countries, with respect to the impact of food importation for tourists (Telfer & Wall 1996); second, the restructuring of agricultural economies in developed countries as a result of globalisation, technological change and neoliberal governance (Whatmore, Lowe & Marsden 1991; Jenkins, Hall & Troughton 1998). The latter concerns became especially significant in Europe, where specific regional development programmes were established to encourage tourism in rural and peripheral areas, but significant government interventions were also undertaken in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States (Hall & Jenkins 1998). The high level of national and regional government interest in tourism and its connections to stimulating the food and agricultural industries were also related to a number of perceived advantages of tourism as a means of economic diversification and development (Hall, Johnson & Mitchell 2000; Hall 2002; Richards 2002), including:

• the notion that gastronomic and cuisine-oriented tourists were high-yield markets (OECD 2012);
• the relative ease of linking food with other visitor products such as cultural and natural heritage attractions, and especially festivals and events, as part of providing a comprehensive offer (Bessière 1998; Bowen & De Master 2014);
• the labour-intensive nature of tourism and hospitality as a means of providing employment opportunities in rural areas with a limited employment base;
• the potential stimulation of specific agricultural products such as wine and artisan foods that were identified with locations and territories (Cavicchi & Santini 2011);
• the territorial nature of much agricultural productions, embodied in the notion of terroir and identity, was having a potentially strong relationship to the overall branding, imaging and positioning of a destination and/or region in a way that may enhance the image of all products and services available from that area (Ilbery et al. 2005; Everett & Aitchison 2008; Sims 2009, 2010; López-Guzmán & Sánchez-Cañizares 2012).

The above drivers of state intervention and activity in food and tourism were arguably also reflective of broader research interest of tourism in rural areas that over time focussed more explicitly on potential relationships with the agricultural sector, including such developments as farm stays, as mechanisms for farm and rural income diversification (Shucksmith et al. 1989; Ilbery 1991). Much of the discussion of the role of tourism in food systems and agriculture was also connected to debates on the “post-productivist” countryside (Shucksmith 1993; Ilbery & Bowler 1998) that saw the supposed decline of “productivism” in rural policy, which can be conceptualised as

a commitment to an intensive, industrially driven and expansionist agriculture with state support based primarily on output and increased productivity. The concern [of productivism] was for ‘modernization’ of the ‘national farm’, as seen through the lens of increased production. By the ‘productivist regime’ we mean the network of institutions oriented to boosting food production from domestic sources which became the paramount aim of rural policy following World War II.

(Lowe 1993: 221)

Tourism became incorporated into the post-productivist countryside because of the greater economic role given to non-agricultural actors in rural economies and policy making, as well as the growing importance of the environment and sustainability as policy goals. In addition, exurbanisation and rural–urban migration processes also led to the significance of lifestyle and amenity as a locational element. Halfacree and Boyle (1998: 9) even argued that ‘migration of people to the more rural areas of the developed world … forms perhaps the central dynamic in the creation of any post-productivist countryside’. Table 1.1 provides an illustration of some of the main themes in the productivist–post-productivist conceptualisation. However, as Wilson (2001) comments, so much of the post-productivist agricultural regime debate was UK-based. Furthermore, although influential in both rural studies and tourism and describing shifts in some, often economically marginal, locations for agriculture that also had high amenity values, the reality is that food producers are operating in a multifunctional agricultural regime in which global agri-business and corporations continue to dominate (Evans, Morris & Winter 2002; Mather, Hill & Nijnik 2006). At a global scale, post-productivist locations remain in the minority while shifts in the economics of agriculture and products and changes in technologies, that is, transportation and intensive irrigation, often mean that some areas, especially periurban locations, become highly contested spaces for productivist and post-productivist understandings of food production and the rural (Lawrence, Richards & Lyons 2013; Roche & Argent 2015).

Although the initial focus on food, tourism and regional development was primarily rural, tourism was also regarded as a response to urban economic restructuring. However, food was not a focus of urban tourism policy with the potential exception of urban neighbourhoods or quarters that could be marketed to visitors, particularly those that specialise in particular ethnic foods, because of the concentration of restaurants, cafés and markets that characterised the neighbourhood (Lin 1998).

Table 1.1 Dimensions of productivism and post-productivism

Dimension	Productivism	Post-productivism
Ideology	Agriculture with central hegemonic position in society; agriculture as stewards of the countryside	Loss of central position of agriculture; changed notions of the countryside and the rural; agriculture perceived as a threat to the countryside
Policy	Strong state support and intervention; security of property rights	Reduced state support; increased regulation of agricultural practices through voluntary agreements and planning regulation; encouragement for better environmental practices
Policy actors	Agricultural policy actors extremely strong	Policy community widened; counter- and exurbanisation; sea change and tree change; increased demands on rural space
Food regime	Fordist; industrialised supply chains	Post-Fordist; alternative food networks
Agricultural production	Agri-business; highly commercialised, industrialised and corporatised; intensification; ongoing focus on increasing productivity levels	Diversification and pluriactivity; move from agricultural production to countryside consumption; critique of agri-business
Farming techniques	Increased mechanisation; decline in labour inputs; increased use of biochemical inputs	Sustainable agriculture; greater role for intellectual capital; organics
Environmental impacts	Growing incompatibility with environmental conservation objectives	Greater emphasis on farm-based environmental conservation practices

Source: Wilson (2001), Mather, Hill and Nijnik (2006), Lawrence, Richards and Lyons (2013), and Roche and Argent (2015).

This background is important because it emphasises that interest in the roles of food and tourism in regional development remains with us after over 30 years of study and that the subject is nothing new. In part this is because the processes of globalisation and economic change have continued over this time, to receive new impetus at times via neoliberal policies and financial crises. However, what has changed is a greater focus on sustainability, the environment and the relocalisation of food as a response to the perceived social, economic and dietary failings of the global food system that has developed over this period (Halweil 2002; DuPuis & Goodman 2005; Ostrom 2006; Marsden 2012). Therefore, the importance of the food, tourism and regional development inter-relationship requires new considerations that seek to understand not only the immediate contributions that tourism can make to the food economy, and vice versa, but also the broader context within which it is embedded.

This chapter provides a general introduction to the main themes of the volume by reviewing some of the key topics that emerge in the relevant literatures. It first seeks to briefly define the concept of food tourism before emphasising that the understanding of the food, tourism and regional development relationship needs to go beyond food tourism, which is where most research and state interventions are positioned, to embrace the various ways in which food and tourism are connected. Following a discussion of the local and regional development as more of a bottom-up approach to development, the introduction then discusses the characteristics of local food systems. However, it also notes that the local food system does not exist in isolation from the global food system and that the relationship between the two creates a number of paradoxes and issues within which tourism is implicated.

The chapter then briefly discusses some of the characteristics of the industrial food supply chain and its implications. This then creates a basis to examine how tourism is then utilised at the firm level to help in the capture of value that may otherwise be a loss to other actors in the supply chain to the end consumer. It highlights the emphasis on the creation of shorter supply chains, that is, direct sales to customers as well as business-to-business (B2B) sales. Important tourism-related initiatives in this area include farmers’ markets, food events and festivals, and restaurants and their use of local food. The chapter then discusses more of the policy actor and producer-related collective efforts to enhance food and tourism relationships. This discussion focusses strongly on the role of clusters, networks and social capital as well as branding and the intellectual property of place, together with deliberative location-based development strategies to shape local foodscapes. These issues also highlight the multi-scaled nature of branding and development and the potential need for improved understanding of brand architecture. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book.

Food tourism

Food tourism is defined by Hall and Mitchell (2001: 308) as ‘visitation to primary and secondary food producers, food festivals, restaurants and specific locations for which food tasting and/or experiencing the attributes of specialist food production region are the primary motivating factor for travel’. Wine tourism is a subset of food tourism, being defined as visitation to vineyards, wineries, wine festivals and wine shows in which grape wine tasting and/or experiencing the attributes of a grape wine region are the prime motivating factors for visitors (Hall 1996). Such definitions do not mean that any trip to an event is food tourism, rather the desire to experience a particular type of food or the produce of a specific region must be the major motivation for such travel. Indeed, food tourism may possibly be regarded as an example of “culinary”, “gastronomic”, “gourmet” or “cuisine” tourism that reflects consumers for whom interest in food and wine is a form of ‘serious leisure’ (Hall, Sharples et al. 2000; Hall & Mitchell 2001; Hjalager 2002; Boniface 2003; Hall, Sharples, Mitchell, et al. 2003; Mitchell & Hall 2003; Long 2004; Hall & Sharples 2008a; Henderson 2009; Horng & Tsai 2012; Hall & Gössling 2013a; Yeoman et al. 2015). Smith (2007: 100), for example, defined “culinary tourism” as ‘any tourism trip during which the consumption, tasting, appreciation, or purchase of [local] food products is an important component […] The central feature of culinary tourism is that it centers on local or regional foods/beverages’.

Such definitional distinctions are significant because they also alert the reader to the potential dimensions of the food tourism market. However, for all these categories described as part of food tourism, food and wine rank as the main or major travel motivator. Such categories of tourism are therefore defined primarily by the consumer (Hall, Sharples & Smith 2003) by virtue of their tourist decision making being primarily determined by a cuisine or foodway or a specific food prod...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• I Introduction
• II Local food systems, tourism and trajectories of regional development
• III The cultural economy of food and tourism
• IV Products, regions and regionality
• V Barriers and constraints
• VI Conclusions
• Index