Marketing strategy planning for Culinary Tourism in the case of Asian Countries

Marketing strategy planning for Culinary Tourism in the case of Asian Countries
Literature review

Culinary tourism is the focus on food as a fascination for investigation and a goal for tourism. Although food has continuously been a part of hospitality administrations for visitors, it was not emphasized by the tourism industry until the late 1990s. It presently incorporates an assortment of groups and products – culinary trails, cooking classes, eateries, cultivate ends of the week, cookbooks, nourishment guides, and modern or adjusted formulas, dishes, and indeed fixings. Whereas most culinary tourism centers on the involvement of eating and tasting of modern nourishments as a commercial venture, it is additionally an educational activity channeling interest around nourishment into learning through it approximately the culture of a specific cooking, the individuals included in creating and planning it, the food framework enabling access to those nourishments, and the potential commitment of visitors to supportability.

Tourism based on food is known by a few terms, and these terms reflect diverse approaches to it as a field of consider as well as an industry specialty (Lucy M. Long, 2013).

It’s defined as the pursuit of unique and memorable eating and drinking experiences focuses on the search for and enjoyment of prepared food and drink. It’s a subset of cultural tourism, not agritourist from where does the term culinary tourism originate from where does the term culinary tourism originate.

A travel study within the USA found that whereas traveling within the past 3 a long time, 17% of leisure travelers engaged in culinary or wine-related exercises; in any case, it is anticipated that this figure will increase altogether within the close future (Leahy, 2007).

To more exactly, 27 million leisure travelers have participated in culinary-related travel in the last 3 years in the U.S. They spend approximately $51 billion annually on travel-related expenses, including $12 billion on culinary activities. Nearly 100% of visitors dine out when traveling. Dining is one of the top three favorite visitor activities. Local cuisine is a motivating factor in choosing a destination. Culinary which is “experiential” speaks to all five senses.

Interest in culinary travel is not reserved to a particular age, sex or ethnic group. Culinary tourists are also interested in museums, shopping, performing arts and outdoor recreation. Culinary travelers are highly motivated to experience unique and memorable dining. They are significantly more likely to research and plan their trips using both print and online materials.

Hall is claimed that successfully integrated food and tourism in effective strategy can enhance country economy too. That’s why in order to develop this branch in tourism industry, the government should pay more attention not only to actively developing culinary tourism markets to compete with other famous cuisine travel destinations but also increasing the planning of their culinary tourism strategy. However most of studies are based on comparing and discussion about marketing in one or more countries. In the Asia-Pacific area, cuisine branch in tourism industry become one of important tourism attractions (Okumus et al.,2007; Horgn and Tsai, 2010).

The major premise of Resource-based theory (RBT) which connects the concepts of economic theories, organizational management and strategic management means that countries should organize and develop travel destination in the country attempting culinary tourism and strengthen its competitiveness should identify its uniqueness and capabilities. And then, link them with strategic tourism development.

Culinary tourism helps not only to improve popular travel destinations but also the culinary cultural image of a country. It means that the strategy based on cuisine industry make the cuisine culture a vital attraction within the travel destination. And also, for local people and communities, tourism provides job opportunities and preserve the local cuisine culture and establish the local community. In addition, the case study studies that the connection between food and tourism is still alive among many aspects such as culture (e.g. Delamont, 1194), authenticity (e.g. Fox, 2007), policies (e.g. Hjalager and Corigliano, 2000; Boyne et al., 2003) and community participation and support (e.g. Quan and Wang, 2004) at the travel destination.

Case Study

Case Study, related to the topic is “Culinary Tourism Strategic Development: an Asia-Pacific Perspective” published in International Journal of Tourism Research.

According to the research today food and cuisines play a basic role in developing their national cultural characteristics and local features. Ignatov and Smith (2006) and Smith and Xiao (2008) classified culinary tourism resources as facilities, activities events and organizations in following table 1.

Today food is a focus for media and activities, so creating an optimal situation for tourism cuisines must pay attention to create a connection between the local tourism image, tradition and history, as is the instance in France and Japan. In order to organize this strategy, Canadian Tourism Commission have begun to establish culinary tourism activities such as food and wine festivals. Now most of countries begun to pay attention to the attraction of food. So according to authors, the initial point which tourism industry should do is to examine the existing culinary resources to detect the potential developments and advantages. After that the advantages and drawbacks of key stakeholders can be considered when developing culinary a tourism style and strategic model suitable for that destination.

In strategic planning RBT mentioned above can illustrate a “strength and weakness analysis”.

Based on this figure, the major steps identify and categorize different resources, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each competitor and provide chances to consume all resources.

Secondly, the capabilities of the public sector should be assessed to ensure that public sector can be more effective or not in terms of the resources consumed in development of culinary tourism strategies. Meanwhile, the potential of the resources and capabilities, exclusivity and sustainable competitive advantages should be evaluated. In addition, to identify resource gaps external opportunities, threats, resources and capabilities should be assessed.

Finally, the based on filled the resource gaps, the resource base must be strengthened.

In the methodology part of the case study, researchers used the document analysis method with the content analysis method to gather information. And then, the analytical results were utilized to formulate the first framework of the key success factors in culinary tourism development strategy. The study searched countries whose tourism development strategies are effective: Hong-Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia (Table 2).