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Destination Foodscape: Creating Memorable Gastronomy Tourism Experiences

 

 Today, individuals have become more conscious of healthy nutrition, where healthy as well as environment-friendly food have become more popular. This trend in gastronomy is also observed in tourism as gastronomy tourism. Travel for the taste of food is represented as food tourism, cuisine tourism, culinary tourism, gastronomy tourism, and taste tourism. Hence, gastronomy tourism represents an emerging tourism market for many countries or cities and creates a unique competitive edge for tourist destinations and related enterprises. For destination managers and tourism businesses, knowing how to develop a memorable experience is significant.

 

 

 A destination foodscape is a holistic conception of food experiences in a destination. Within tourism, a destination foodscape denotes the places that facilitate a wide range of food experiences, beyond just restaurants and bars. Destination's foodscape is an aggregation built on travelers' various food experiences in a destination based on the physical environment, food quality value, social interaction, monetary value, and divergence. 

 

 

 Food is experienced through sight, taste, and smell not only do tourists have to eat when they travel in order to cover their biological needs but also gastronomy contributes to tourists’ quality of experience, thus it can mark the overall travel experience. Gastronomic activities can be the primary but also the supporting motivation for travel, and second, gastronomic activities must be unique and memorable food tourism has been identified as a primary activity and forms a concrete segment of the tourism industry. Motivations to participate in gastronomy tourism are various. For instance, when experiencing new local cuisines, tourists are also experiencing a new culture. In addition, cultural motivators lead the tourist into learning about and experiencing, the culture of societies. Meals also clearly have an important social function like building new social relations and strengthening social bonds. Eating out at well-known restaurants has always been an important means of drawing status distinctions and for these tourists, gastronomy forms a part of their social image and prestige.

 

 

 As a result, many tourist destinations have begun to focus on their local food and cuisine as an important element and pull factor in the promotion of their destination.