Tourism

Culinary tourism is the contemporary crowd puller within tourism marketing circles. While the role of food in initiating and developing relationships has far reaching roots, it is only recently that the role and importance of culinary experiences has started being acknowledged and even pursued. As a matter of fact, the gastronomic culture of a nation is always a true manifestation of all other facets of culture and physical environment characterizing the nations overall cultural standpoint. Apparently, the shortest and most trusted method of tasting andor sampling a peoples culture is through their culinary traditions. While beautiful sceneries, architecture, wildlife and other tourism products may be responsible for drawing large numbers of tourists from all corners of the world, it is the quality and relevancy of the food and probably wine offered in such touring outings that impacts heavily on the general picture that tourists end up painting on any given tourist destination. Nonetheless, culinary tourism as an important facet of tourism marketing is yet to be fully exploited by the market players due to the apparent underutilization of the contemporary appealing media tools as well as the inherent dissonant between governments, destination marketing organizations, agencies, and specialty restaurants on one side and potential tourists on the other.

Introduction
The purpose of this briefing paper is to comprehensively investigate the role and importance of culinary tourism and how it can be incorporated in improving the competitiveness of a potential tourism destination. The gist of the briefing revolves around the argument that food is becoming the in thing in the contemporary tourism marketing circles. The inherent rave that used to accompany conventional tourist attractions such as museums, architectures, appealing countryside, wildlife and the rest seems to have lost its glow (Hall et al, 2003). As a matter of fact, today many tourists are making it as their first priority to acquaint themselves with the culinary cultures of the places they intend to visit. Interestingly, evidential facts indicate that the displacement of conventional tourist attractions by food service has been long overdue given the age-old disappointments that tourists were made to undergo while travelling to far destinations. As Telfer and Hashimoto (2002) asserts, no matter the attractiveness of the sceneries  historical travelers  encountered in their touring endeavors they always went home complaining as a result of low quality and less culturally relevant food they were offered. Fortunately, this is not the case in the contemporary tourism marketing trends. As a matter of fact, great gains have been made in incorporating food into the mainstream tourism marketing domain. Precisely, many tourism national marketing boards, agents, and marketers alike have been forced to adjust to this paradigmatic shift in order to stay relevant (Mason,  Paggiaro, 2009).

Culinary Tourism and Tourism Marketing
Role of Culinary Services in Tourism Marketing
Owing to the whims of supply and demand, tourism industry is greatly influenced by the nature of potential tourists tastes and the extent to which the existing tourist destinations are capable andor willing to fulfill such tastes.  As such, it is clear that for any tourist destination to successfully tap in revenue from potential tourists they must provide products that are appealing to the tourists. The contemporary tourists seems to deviate from their historical counterparts in that they derive more pleasure and meaning from  true hands on experiences gained through literally tasting the unique cultures of the places they visit. Apparently, food is a key facet to achieving this feat as it offers a multi-sensory experience to tasting all the salient facets of any given destination culture. Furthermore, basing on the evidential notion that tourists tend to enjoy eating local foods as one way of tasting the entire culture of the locality they visit, it can be argued that food service plays a huge role in balancing the demand and supply scale of tourism marketing (du Rand  Heath, 2006).

In its own right, food plays a core role in authenticating the potential tourist destination. First and foremost the very knowledge of the roles played by food services in tourism marketing influences national tourism boards, agencies, and marketers to put in place sound measures capable of stratifying the tastes and preferences of the tourists. These measures goes a long way in building strong and sustainable destinations capable of providing quality and culturally relevant cuisines that in turn can attract many tourists during all times of the year (du Rand, Heath  Alberts, 2003). Moreover, given the recently rejuvenated and upcoming tourist destinations such as cities and towns given the impetus by the quality and relevancy of their culinary products and which hitherto were ignored due to their lack of appealing topographies, it can be argued that food service plays a core role in indentifying, developing and enhancing tourist destinations. Basing on the notion of sustainable competitiveness as advanced by Ritchie and Crouch (cited in du Rand  Heath, 2006) it can be clearly seen that indeed food service as a new facet in tourism marketing authenticates and increases the competitiveness of new tourist destinations.

Importance of Culinary Services in Tourism Marketing
Culinary service contributes directly in building strong economies that can comfortably provide environmentally and cultural responsive infrastructures capable of streamlining the overall delivery of quality cuisines. For instance, destinations that attract large numbers of tourists all year round end up amassing huge revenues in foreign exchange. In turn, this foreign exchange can be wisely used to improve a nations core infrastructure such as transport, communication, hospitality, and security and hence making it more strategically competitive and capable of strengthening its overall tourism marketing bargaining chip (Handszuh, 2000).  Moreover, from food services, food attractions, as well as food tourism, culinary destinations can manifest. This happens as the modern day tourists rake for destinations that provided maximum culinary satisfaction. While food tourism encourages the consumption of different types of culturally relevant foods it also leads to the initiation of sustainable relationships between locals and foreigners. In response, a relationship initiated through culinary experiences goes a long way in building strong destination brand images. Moreover, quality and culturally relevant cuisine forms an important facet for stimulating crucial sustainable conscious domains in a society. In extension, the importance of food service cannot be overemphasized given that food services directly imparts on the agricultural capabilities of a given locality it also indirectly influences a societies overall economic strengths, bars exploitation, economically empowers the local folks and most importantly it builds cultural pride (du Rand, Heath  Alberts, 2003).

From a different perspective, tourism marketing relies greatly on globalization and localization of places. Given that culinary experiences shaped around local cultural tastes goes a long way in attracting large numbers of tourists from all corners of the world it can be boldly opined that indeed culinary tourism has great importance in the overall tourism marketing domain. Culturally relevant and quality local cuisines have got the potential of opening up localities which hitherto were unknown and propelling them into the global arena. Local based farms and restaurants that offer specialized culinary experiences have the potential of expanding the economies of localities and hence diversifying the tourism marketing domain from a localized activity to a globally compatible facet (du Rand  Heath Hall et al, 2003).

Culinary Tourism Case Study
The role, importance, challenges, and what should be done to boost culinary tourism as a key facet in tourism marketing can be better outlined using the case of South Africa, an example of an emerging culinary destination whose several DMOs, agencies, marketers and restaurants have made significant gains in making culinary experiences the mainstay of their tourism marketing endeavors alongside other conventional products such as beautiful sceneries. A rigorous study carried out by du Rand, Heath and Alberts (2003) outlines very crucial information on how culinary services are being utilized to authenticate and make the country more competitive. The study employed a gamut of approaches that encompassed the sourcing of information from both secondary and primary sources to come up with concise findings. Data was quantitatively analyzed using situational analysis tools that comprehensively synthesized data collected from all the countries nine provincial divisions encompassing a total of 55 tourism destinations. Overall, the study was broken into three phases with the first phase consisting of experimental analysis of hands on information from the 55 tourism destinations. The second phase comprised of a purposive analysis of secondary information related to the countrys culinary industry. Thirdly, efforts were made to evaluate the overall relevancy of the research in regards to its essence to the key processes of planning and implantation of tourism marketing strategies in a culinary destination (du Rand  Heath, 2006). It was found that South Africa food play a pivotal role in shaping the overall tourism marketing domain. As a matter of fact, it covers 32.7 percent of overall DMOs attractions packages as the main attraction, and an additional 39.7 percent in a supporting capacity. Interestingly, wine was also found to pay a key attraction role, recording a13.8 percent rating among all DMOs. Overall, it was deduced that the role of culinary experiences in shaping the countys overall tourism marketing positioning is propelled by the rich traditional foods that requires less efforts and resources in preparation or even marketing (du Rand, Heath and Alberts, 2003).

Challenges Facing Culinary Tourism
In as much as gains made by various destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to entrench food and wine as core tourism marketing products are commendable, a lot remain to be desired. According to Horng and Tsai (2010) the greatest incentive for the growth of culinary tourism as a key facet of tourism marketing is the magnitude of motivation extended to potential tourists. Apparently, this motivation is generated by the informational power imparted to the potential tourists through the various publicity means utilized by DMOs, agencies, marketers, and restaurants. Tellingly, quite a number of national tourism bodies in Australia, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong and a gamut of other popular tourist destinations have made commendable gains in marketing their local cuisines through the mass media. Even so, there has been glaring over reliance on conventional publicity means such as the TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines giving a complete blackout to internet services. Unfortunately, this has only served to slow down the growth of new culinary-based destinations given the large following that the internet enjoys today.  Many upcoming tourist destinations are yet to enjoy full visitation simply because many potential foodies are yet to learn about their existence. Another area of culinary tourism that lags behind is the apparent dissonance between agencies, marketers, as well as restaurants and the potential tourists. This scenario is exacerbated by the lack of purposive efforts to identify salient customer tastes and preferences. As such, the destination competitiveness is greatly compromised more so among new and upcoming destinations (du Rand, Heath and Alberts, 2003).

Conclusion and Recommendations
In as much as a local cultures own unique cuisine embodies and expresses its character and may eventually become famous as an international brand, food and cuisine play an ever more important role in the differentiation and promotion of specific tourist destinations. Tellingly, as more and more people travel in search of new gastronomic experiences new tourism destinations a re developed while the existing ones are rejuvenated. A central hypothesis is that the inherent dynamism in culinary based tourism directly offers both tourist destinations a developmental lifeline and hence a unique competitive advantage as boldly outlined in a number of studies revisited in this briefing (du Rand, Heath and Alberts, 2003 Hall et al, 2003 du Rand  Heath, 2006, and Horng  Tsai, 2010). It is strikingly contenting to note the rave with which DMOs have labored to create competitive and sustainable tourist destinations hinged on quality and culturally responsive culinary experiences. Even so, much needs to be done. As a matter of fact, du Rand, Heath and Alberts (2003) offer the following recommendations to governments, DMOs, agencies, marketers, and restaurants.

Crop up the use of internet based services to promote the unique culinary values that abounds their destinations. This is because the internet does better than other conventional means of publicity given its inherent ability to offer instant response to information sought as well as the large following it command s (Carroll, 2007). As a matter of fact, DMOs through their respective governments needs to develop highly interactive and informative websites as well as utilizing the existing plethora of social networking sites such as FaceBook, Orkut, Twitter, and others that currently enjoys huge membership. Most importantly, DMOs should subscribe to the latest technological developments in webhosting and connectivity services which enhance the easy access, comparison, as well as retrieval of culinary tourism product packages.

Moreover, so as to address the inherent dissonance between the service providers and customers there is need for DMOs, agencies, andor restaurants to carryout purposive research aimed at indentifying the unique tourists culinary trends.  This will go a long way in instituting timely and relevant interventions to persuade the tourists into making purchase decisions that favors what is produced in the market. With the combination of these recommendations and the existing measures it is expected that at the long run the supply culinary experiences will balance the demand.

Governments through the respective DMOs should rejuvenate their overall tourism marketing by staging quality and culturally relevant cuisines as the key destination authentication and branding too.
New gastronomic routes should be opened up in potentially rich cultural areas with rich culinary tastes. This can be achieved by erecting as many restaurants and specialty inns as possible. Such specialty outlets will go a long way in ensuring an uninterrupted flow of quality and culturally relevant cuisines.

Limitations
One of this paper briefings major limitations is that its contents were not retrieved from primary sources or directly from a field observation as they were collected from secondary sources that comprised of academic sources and other related sources. Though great care was paid in the selection of such academic sources their authenticity cannot be completely guaranteed. Moreover, such secondary sources may have been biased in their findings and conclusions given their secondary nature. The number of academic sources (eight) used in the preparation of this research briefing is small when compared to the complex nature of the topic covered. Again, only a single case study (South Africa) was used, a thing that may open up the briefing to future questions regarding its broad generalizations. Even so, it is hoped that its recommendations will be of great use to governments, tourism boards, DMOs, agencies, and restaurants who intend to propel their domestic tourist destinations to the international limelight.