1.1 Food , Territory and Branding
The potential of food as an industry as well as social, cultural and health commodity is enormous. Food has connecting power. It is able to connect people of various age, culture, religion and social background. It is also one of the oldest industries that contribute to local development and growth. Moreover, food is a cross-sectoral economic activity, and thus, it is closely linked to other activities including tourism , health and well-being , bioeconomy, safety and security, waste management, transportation and logistics, etc.
Hall (2012, p. 50) argues that “ food consumption is integral to tourism and its economic impact can be important not only for immediate businesses that directly provide food for tourists (such as hotels, restaurants and attractions), it can also have significant economic impact throughout the food supply chain ”, especially if food provided is supplied locally. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2012) revealed that food has an important role in the development of tourism services, since it often comprises 30% or more of tourist expenditure and this money is regularly spent directly with local businesses.
The concept of “Foodscapes ” which unite local culture, creativity and food is becoming relevant to underline the important linkages between novelty, authenticity and locality in food experiences. Small-scale food production can represent a route to the future if a strategy considering multiple stakeholders, accounting social responsibility and dealing with multiple identities can be set up (Ashworth and Kavaratzis 2009).
Richards (2015) underlines the role that food can have in influencing the overall branding and positioning of a destination:
- Food is a part of the destination marketing mix, because it helps to give a sense of place and allows tourists to literally taste the destination and come directly into contact with local culture.
- Tourists have to eat at least two or three times a day, and gastronomy is the culture that they come into contact with most often. They literally have to ingest the local culture.
- Eating habits are differences that immediately become obvious: the time people eat, the way people eat and what they eat all become immediate points of difference on entering a new culture.
- Food provides a direct connection with landscape because tourists can recognise origins of food.
For these reasons, according to Hall and Sharples (2008), several motivations push private and public interest in relationships between gastronomy , tourism and branding :
- Gastronomy and cuisine-oriented tourists are perceived as high-yield markets.
- Food tourism can be linked with other visitor products such as cultural and natural heritage attractions, thereby providing a comprehensive offer.
- Rural areas that may otherwise be affected by economic restructuring are provided with an alternative: the development, maintenance and/or even revival of local food products.
- Urban neighbourhoods or quarters can become attractive to visitors, especially those that specialise in particular ethnic foods . A concentration of restaurants, cafés and markets can bring character to the neighbourhood.
A recent report released by the World Tourism Organisation (2012) stresses the importance of food as immaterial cultural heritage that can enhance the reputation of destinations worldwide and differentiate a place. With the inscription of food -related tradition and cultures (such as Mediterranean diet, gingerbread craft from Northern Croatia , traditional Mexican cuisine and gastronomic meal of the French) in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, food has finally received status as a true part of a common heritage. Thus, food is gradually replacing geographical location as brand destination (Williams et al. 2014), and it is becoming an essential component in destination choice motivation (Hall et al. 2003). For these reasons, many tour operators worldwide are exploiting this trend organising gastronomic experiences such as:
- offering cooking school holidays,
- dining at famous restaurants in the light of their chef reputation,
- visiting farmers ’ markets,
- visiting food producers,
- organising street food tours.
In all of these, two concepts are particularly important: co-creation and experience economy . Their typical elements proven in the literature, such as close contact and involvement of customers, as well as the educational, escapist, entertainment and aesthetic profile of the consumption experience are easily detectible in many food -related touristic products. Nevertheless, they cannot be taken for granted, and according to Santini et al. (2011), diversification strategies using experience economy and co-creation approaches can help SMEs and SME networks producing food in rural areas in:
- repositioning their offer, because they can address new market niches,
- gaining a sustainable competitive advantage through the inimitability of some product attributes that makes a product unique,
- differentiating and positioning in a distinctive way among regional competitors, being perceived as unique by customers.
Hall (2012, p. 51) underlines the importance to plan regional economic development strategies and suggests that: “…the critical question becomes how cuisine, food and tourism fit into the bigger picture and overall economic development strategies of a region or country? The above question is fundamental to thinking about the economic development value of food and tourism . Agencies need to question the perspective promoted by some parties that food tourism is an automatic good for economic development at a destination. Policy decisions need to be informed by quality research and access to a range of different perspectives on food and tourism initiatives. The role of research is extremely important as different regions not only have substantially different visitor profiles, demographics and psychographics but also very different types of food , tourism products as well as, supply and value chains”.
Hall thus suggests that promotion and governance of a place are complex issues. It does not exist a “one size fits all” solution. Destinations cannot just copy what has worked in other regions , particularly as what was best practice at one point in time will not be later (Hall and Williams 2008), and this difficulty becomes bigger when place branding is based on food .
When dealing with food , the topic of sustainability under all its perspectives is more evident. Governmental ...