2.4 Developing a Gastronomic Tourism Destination Strategy
In 1950, 25 million people traveled abroad. By 2015 that figure had ballooned to almost 1.2 billion (World Tourism Organization, 2016) and by 2024 had reached 1.4 billion (World Tourism Organization, 2025). The first World Forum on Food Tourism took place in 2015 in San Sebastian, Spain. It was popular enough that the retitled 2nd World Forum on Gastronomic Tourism was held in Peru the following year. As the field of gastronomic tourism has begun to garner scholarly attention, some researchers “recommend the need to differentiate between tourists who consume food as a part of the travel experience and those tourists whose activities, behaviors, and even destination selection are influenced by an interest in food” (Hall & Sharples, 2003, and OECD 2012:52, as cited in Mulcahy, 2019, p. 29). In 2019, the World Tourism Organization and the Basque Culinary Center released a set of Guidelines for the Development of Gastronomy Tourism, which defines the sector as
based on a concept of knowing and learning, eating, tasting and enjoying the gastronomic culture that is identified with a territory. It is not possible to talk of gastronomic tourism without also talking about the culinary identity of the terroir as a distinguishing feature. The territory is the backbone of gastronomy because a destination’s landscapes, culture, products, techniques and dishes define its culinary identity. (pp. 8–9)
The project clearly articulates the importance of education in creating a gastronomic identity for the tourist sector. The guidelines themselves, in fact, drew on scholarly expertise in compiling their recommendations, enlisting several individuals from the Basque Culinary Center’s Master’s Course on Gastronomy Tourism to contribute to the document.
In sum, the guidelines clearly outline the necessary stages required in developing a territory as a successful gastronomic destination, with the first being the creation of a “Strategic Plan for Gastronomy Tourism.” To be successful, the guidelines stipulate that a plan must not only lay out the vision and mission of the strategy but it must also align with the destination’s general tourism strategy. The plan, in turn, should be disseminated to all of the potential players who might help develop a region’s gastronomic identity. These include produce and dairy farms, fisheries, wineries, breweries and distilleries, food producers, restaurants, caterers, hotels, food trucks, food shops, cooking and hospitality schools, and venues that might host gastronomic events, festivals, and cooking workshops and competitions. The gastronomic plan must also draw regularly from market intelligence systems and reports to keep up-to-date on tourism trends and tourist demands, desires, behavior, satisfaction, and spending and consuming patterns. This constantly updated information must also be easily accessible and disseminated among the various players in the destination’s food industry.
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Key Takeaway: To achieve and maintain success, gastronomic destinations need to collaborate with the region’s general tourism strategy and communicate effectively with all those stakeholders who might help develop and promote a region’s gastronomic identity. When successful, gastronomic tourism enhances a region’s economic, social, and communal well-being. The creativity and energy behind Ireland’s national DMO, Fáilte Ireland provides an inspirational example of how a country can transform itself from a culinary unknown into an international gastronomic destination within the course of a decade.
Significance to Gastronomic Tourism: By adhering to the Guidelines for the Development of Gastronomic Tourism (2019), destinations can develop, implement, and sustain their success as a food lover’s destination, which helps promote the local food culture.
Significance to Tourism: The capacity of gastronomic tourism to showcase the “taste” of a given destination makes it a compelling focus for tourism development in that it benefits local businesses and helps a place craft an identity.
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Those involved with developing gastronomic tourism must also keep in mind the impact that tourists have on the destination, keeping an eye on sustainability—one of the prime upsides of gastronomy being its emphasis on and promotion of local growers, producers, and culinary artisans. The capacity of gastronomic tourism to showcase the “taste” of a given destination makes it a compelling focus for tourism development in that it benefits local businesses and helps a place craft an identity. The rise of social media likewise plays an essential role and “best practice DMOs are successfully integrating user-generated social media content into their promotional campaigns, while at the same time developing their own sophisticated content platforms in cooperation with local food tourism suppliers” (Skift Team & Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance, p. 8). In its report on “The Rise of Food Tourism,” the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance (OCTA) lists the following criteria as essential for a place to become a successful gastronomic tourist destination:
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- Leadership
- Market-ready or near-market-ready culinary products and resources
- An integrated strategy
- Partnership and community-based collaboration
- Financial support and performance measures
- Destinations with good access from key origin markets
- Sufficient market intelligence
- Food tourism resources distinctive to the region
- A critical mass of agri- and/or food tourism experiences
- An effective Destination Marketing Organization (2015, p. 9)
To achieve these goals, a gastronomic tourism development strategy should take into account the desire of food-driven tourists, especially Millennials, to learn about a destination by understanding the origins of its foods—where ingredients come from, how they are prepared, and how its iconic dishes came to represent the region. Food-oriented tourists seek dining experiences in order to socialize with others, tend to revisit destinations, and demonstrate a high degree of loyalty. They also spend more money while traveling than the average tourist. In sum, the gastronomic tourist is driven to learn about a place through its food culture and culinary history. These tourists want to connect to a place by visiting local growers and producers and by participating in educational classes, tastings, festivals, and tours.
Gastronomic Tourism Enhances
- cultural heritage
- connections between people and place
- knowledge about a region’s agricultural practices
- knowledge about a region’s culinary heritage and traditional dishes
- physically pleasurable experiences
- the senses in a way that helps create memories
- social connection and well-being
The President and CEO of Canada’s Culinary Tourism Alliance, Rebecca Mackenzie explains: “developed properly, gastronomic tourism tells the story of the heritage, the people, and the landscape of a geographic area. It reflects ‘place’, enriches experiences, and can be a valuable tool to boost economic, social, and community development (p. 70). For example, to establish and promote itself as a gastronomic destination, the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) developed the annual “Tasting Australia” festival, which showcases food and wine producers and their products over an intensive eight-day program. The events include farm meals, “food and wine master classes, producer picnics, and other activities as unique as a nine-course mushroom tasting in a limestone cave. Most importantly, attendees have the opportunity to interact with hospitality professionals, renowned chefs, and local food and wine personalities” (Skift Team & OCTA, p. 15). “Tasting Australia became the nation’s first culinary festival to host a bloggers conference, gaining low-cost international exposure.
As another example, Nashville drew on its music scene to create a synergistic push that animated its gastronomic strategy. In particular, it partnered with Bon Appétit magazine to create “custom Spotify playlists curated by Nashville’s top chefs” and “hosted one of the magazine’s popular Grub Crawls, which turned out to be one of the fastest selling events they had ever organized” (Skift Team & OCTA, pp. 15–16). The Nashville restaurant industry reached out to the music industry to create marketing partnerships, eventually leading to the development of the Music City Food + Wine Festival.
Yet another successful campaign can be found in the case of Fáilte Ireland, the national DMO, which developed a National Food Tourism Implementation Framework with the express goal that visitors to Ireland would recognize the country as a valuable food destination. The DMO selected ambassadors who showed a “demonstrable commitment to implement change” and who had “a food tourism agenda” and “a proven track record of collaboration” (Mulcahy, 2019, p. 51). In his case study of Ireland, tourism scholar John D. Mulcahy explains:
By October 2012, 14 people (food producers, hoteliers, restaurateurs, retailers and event organisers) were selected for the Food Tourism Network Development program as Food Champions. They immediately went on a food tourism benchmarking journey to Prince Edward County in Canada where they experienced a bespoke itinerary developed by the Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance. Canada’s Prince Edward County was picked as a model because it had faced similar challenges to Ireland and had a range of successfully integrated food tourism products and activities. (2019, p. 151)
Eight more champions were selected to travel to Norway, which had risen to international culinary stardom due in large part to chef René Redzepi and his spin on “Nordic food,” which earned his restaurant Noma three Michelin stars among myriad other culinary accolades, including four-time winner of the Best Restaurant in the World award.
In 2013, the champions who had journeyed to Ontario and to Norway traveled the “Wild Atlantic Way, Ireland’s first long-distance touring route” that spans from Donegal to Cork (Mulcahy, 2019, p. 51). The champions applied the knowledge and experience they gained on benchmark tours of Ontario and Norway in order to envision ways to enhance the gastronomic appeal of the Wild Atlantic Way. The end result was such a success that the 2012–2013 strategy was followed by a new Food Tourism Activity Plan for 2013–2016 and yet another for 2018–2023, the latter of which—prior to the interruption of COVID-19—focused on four main goals: 1) raising Ireland’s international reputation as a gastronomic tourist destination 2) enabling creative projects that amplify Ireland’s local food cultures 3) building networks of businesses focused on food and tourism 4) encouraging relationships between food and drink operators and Fáilte Ireland. The DMO actively encourages food businesses and destinations to create food trails and provides ongoing support for the marketing initiatives of individual communities through its annual “Ireland’s Top Foodie Town” competition. Fáilte Ireland also developed the “National Quality Assurance Framework, which vetted tourism suppliers and labeled their products to assure credibility” (Skift Team & OCTA, p. 9)
As Ireland did when it partnered with culinary champions to help enhance the gastronomic appeal of the Wild Atlantic Way, developing food trails has been shown to be an effective tool for tourism development. As Namita Roy et al. argue in their essay “Gastronomic Trails as Service Ecosystems,” the long-term sustainability of a trail as a successful tourist draw “depends on the involvement and value creation by and for multiple stakeholders including the producers, regional associations, and tourism authorities, as well as the tourists” (2019, p. 179). Food trails draw on a region’s terroir and on the geographic proximity of food growers and producers in order to supply tourists with cultural, social, and experiential access to a curated ecosystem. Working together, various stakeholders can pool their resources to draw tourists and to provide the marketing, infrastructure, cohesive messaging, and integrated, smoothly functioning services needed to ensure a successful visitor experience. The success of food trails depends, in large part, on effective collaboration and cooperation among various stakeholders.
Meet Dawnie Andrak
[IMAGE OF DAWNIE AND CAPTION HERE]
About Dawnie
Dawnie Andrak often finds herself eating with people she met just moments before. The talk is usually easy-going and the food always seems to “break the ice.” Diners often express enthusiasm, making comments such as “Wow, this tastes amazing!” or “This chef really seems to appreciate food” or a “I don’t normally eat spicy food, but this is great!” Dawnie frequently finds herself in these situations because she owns Local Roots Food Tours, a business that offers walking tours of the City of Sacramento and its surrounding farmland.
For a flat fee, guests are taken on a three-hour tour that introduces them to the food and history of a designated neighborhood or area. Small groups of guests, usually no more than 14 people, visit independent restaurants and businesses, which feature seasonal and locally grown foods. As guests taste and dine on local foods and iconic dishes, they also learn about the region’s history, its legends, key buildings, and important landmarks.
In the 2010s, just as gastronomic tourism began its dramatic rise in popularity, Dawnie was looking for the “next best thing” in the form of a business. Having helped found a small tech company in the 1990s, Dawnie wanted something more. But she needed it to be fun, sustainable, and something she would want to do for many years to come. She and her partner are avid cyclists and formed an LLC to explore leading cycling tours in the Sacramento, CA, region. They organized and led a couple of them, which were well attended and highly reviewed. The tours included visits to local farms and restaurants, and one even ended with participants joining an annual pig roast put on by local restaurateurs.
Local Roots Food Tours
Before taking over the company, Dawnie decided to join several Local Roots Food Tours. She loved the tours, but she also had many ideas about how to make them even better. In the Fall of 2015, she received an email from the owner of Local Roots Food Tours who wanted to sell the business quickly. Without even meeting in person, Dawnie spoke with the owner by phone, and they cut a deal the day before Thanksgiving. By the following Thursday, Dawnie owned the company. With bookings already on the calendar, Dawnie needed to quickly figure out how to run the tours. She was also wrapping up her first semester as a graduate student in a Master of Arts in Food Studies program.
Dawnie often says that “the world makes sense to me when I view it through the lens of food.” It was the impetus for going to graduate school at the age of 50 to study food and earn a degree in food studies. Although Dawnie had no real need to go back to school, studying history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, law, politics, and literature as it relates to food was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Earning her MA helped Dawnie to shape her life’s focus on food in more ways than she can count.
Since channeling her considerable energy into food, Dawnie has served on the Board of Directors for Sacramento-based Food Literacy Center, a non-profit that teaches kids to eat their veggies. Enrolling in Food Literacy Center’s teacher training program allowed Dawnie to teach classes to kids, earning her the designation of Food Genius. She has also worked with the Sacramento Chapter of Slow Food, and in 2024, she was inducted into Les Dames d’Escoffier International, Sacramento, an organization of women leaders in food, beverage, and hospitality.
Dawnie also served for eight years as the Board Chair for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), a statewide organization focused on developing “sustainable food and farming systems through policy advocacy and on-the-ground programs that create more resilient family farms, communities, and ecosystems” (CAFF, n.d.). Working with family farmers only deepened Dawnie’s belief that food, from the time it is planted to the moment it has been consumed, concerns all of humanity. We must all eat to live.
Commensality—the experience of sharing food with others—takes many forms in our modern world, from quick bites to leisurely meals. If informed by local gastronomic knowledge and a deep-seated passion for place-based foods and food products, gastronomic tours not only enable travelers to dine with strangers but they also enact a form of regional gastrodiplomacy, one that teaches tourists about a region’s “taste of place,” or terroir, which comprises its food, food culture, food stories, culinary history, and gastronomic identity. In a world that finds people more connected technologically than they are in person, sharing meals with strangers can create bonds and open minds.
Dawnie explains the dynamic:
As an owner of a food tour company, I see daily the practical implications of bringing people, usually complete strangers, together to share a meal—or, more accurately, in the case of most of our tours, 5 to 6 small dishes from a wide variety of Sacramento’s local restaurants. Guests who live locally, international travelers, and tourists from near and far, pay $95 per person to have a well-educated tour guide take them through the streets and alleyways of Sacramento to taste delicious food along the way. Tourists can get to know the heartbeat of the city in 3 short hours. Running a gastronomic tour company that introduces visitors to the local food scene takes part in gastrodiplomacy, offering a fresh and exploratory way for guests to learn about my hometown of Sacramento. It is more than that, too. As Jennie Germann Molz writes, “Culinary tourism is not necessarily about knowing or experiencing another culture but about performing a sense of adventure, adaptability, and openness to any other culture.” The best tour guests are seeking something new—whether dining at a new restaurant or learning about the folklore and history of a destination. Walking, talking, eating, and drinking, each simple enough, form a powerful team when combined. As stories are shared over foods, friends are made. Sharing food and stories is “commensality” at its best. (D. Andrak, personal communication, April 28, 2025)
Tasting new foods and dishes prepared by a curated list of restaurants provides visitors with unique experiences. In addition to bringing in tourism dollars and expanding the reach of local businesses, professionally led food tours, as Dawnie understands, serve as a form of gastrodiplomacy, promoting and educating tourists about a region through its gastronomic identity and culinary history.
Dawnie says she has the best job in the world. She gets paid to eat and drink, and to walk and talk. Dawnie’s company, Local Roots Food Tours, introduces guests to the local restaurants and chefs, art and architecture, folklore and history of Sacramento and the surrounding area. As Dawnie explains,
It’s a practical action—we need a way to pay the mortgage, of course. But as someone who believes that food is the most important connection shared by humans around the globe, leading food tours enables me to practice gastronomic diplomacy, connecting with guests near and far. As we eat and talk with one another, we form social bonds, create pleasurable memories, and expand our knowledge. (D. Andrak, personal communication, April 28, 2025)
Attributions
These are created and curated by food growers and producers within geographic proximity to one another who join together to create a trail that visitors can follow in order to experience a variety of tastings and tours. These might showcase the region’s bounty, such as the Atlantic Way Trail along coastal Ireland or they may focus on one particular artisanal product, such as the cheese trails and wine trails of the coastal Pacific in the United States. The success of food trails depends, in large part, on effective collaboration and cooperation among various stakeholders.
Successful foodscapes or gastronomic destinations are filled with individuals, artisans, and businesses eager to teach tourists about a region’s “taste of place,” or terroir. Those who practice gastrodiplomacy seek to educate visitors about their region’s food, food culture, food stories, culinary history, and gastronomic identity.
