Catering for the traveling foodies - developing a gastrotourism strategy through multistakeholder governance in the city of Aalborg

Description

Special interest tourism is spreading in an age of increased connectedness and mobility. Food is one of these interests that is creating a new type of gastro-tourism and a new community of foodies that want to explore in depth the nature of foodscapes as part of their travelling experience. At the same time, there is a growing interest in the creation and marketing of these foodscapes – to create attractive and meaningful identities around the places that tourist visits. As such there is a growing focus on the distinct culinary traditions that exists in regions and cities as well as creating certain identities and brands around them. But building an identity and creating a foodscape that is attractive to foodies is a complex process. Developing meaningful foodscapes obviously serves a number of other purposes than to cater for special interest tourists and travelers. Furthermore, the governance of foodscape strategy development rely on the combined efforts of a number of different stakeholders in city or region. The gastro tourist – a travelling foodie – can be thought of as people with a special interest in a broad range of food topics. As people who want to go behind the scenes of the traditional food system. As such is can be assumed to be much more than eating at fancy restaurants. Interests could be the possibility of visiting unique types of processing and plants, options of exploring the local terroir, the ability of visiting food markets, agro type of activities such as “hunting and harvesting”, social events such as “Eat with the locals”, participation in local cooking events as well as Gastro and Edu tourism events that includes hands on food activities. This paper looks further into the processes and active components of the these foodscape strategies in the city of Aalborg.

Period	10 Oct 2018
Event title	Tomorrow’s Food Travel : #TFT18
Event type	Conference
Location	Göteborg, SwedenShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International