Food and travel ...Going places with Kofi Akpabli
Let me put it this way, “Everyone has to eat,” The surge of interest in food, drink and culinary culture travel is driving a growing food tourism market.
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Yea, people save money, get up and travel to places just to enjoy their food offerings. This might sound strange but our relationships with food within travel runs deeper than we might think.
Indeed, in our own culture here in Ghana, food and travel seem to have become indelibly intertwined. When a traveller visits us the experience is not complete until we serve him food.
Let us reverse the scenario. When we come back from a long visit or vacation, we hardly tell our folks at home about the shops we visited or the museums we saw. But we may bombard them with topics related to what food we relished and which we couldn’t stomach.
Personally I like to try local food and snacks when I am out and about. But do watch out for hygiene and handling, if you are similarly inclined.
Food tourism is the pursuit and enjoyment of unique and memorable food and drink experiences, both near and far. Globally the idea of food tourism has been growing over the past 10 years and there’s been tremendous growth in the industry.
There are three kinds of food tourists: the “deliberate” who specifically travel just for food, the “opportunistic” who go on trips where they seek out food and drink but that is not a factor in choosing a destination and the “accidental” who participate in food and drink just because it’s there.
Food travellers tend to skew towards middle age and younger although most people think they are older, wealthier people. Food travellers are better educated and their incomes are average to slightly higher than the average.
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There’s tremendous opportunity for agents to tap this market. Everyone eats and drinks and most people are interested in food and drink. However, the ability to successfully package and sell food travel can very easily be done wrong.
Agents might think it’s just a question of booking clients into an expensive restaurant, but they need to understand the nuances and depth of the food travel experience.
For example, what is the client’s profile? The experience has to be skewed towards the client’s expectations. Some clients are authentic and localist. Others are gourmet and trendy.
Erik Wolf, who founded the World Food Travel Association in Portland, estimates that food tourism has grown into a $150 billion industry annually, a figure the association came up with based on internal research.
It has evolved from culinary tourism, where travellers merely watched experts in demonstration kitchens, to full-on participatory travel, where travellers get up close and personal with chefs, the products and the process itself. It's travel that embraces a more genuine, authentic experience.
Reasons for the growth of this sector include a greater focus on health and healthy eating, the buying-local movement, the ubiquity of eating and drinking and, of course, the myriad celebrity chef and cooking shows on TV.
What's more, it's rare for an issue of a travel magazine not to feature a food story or two and food publications are incorporating more travel features, as well. The October issue of Afar magazine was entirely devoted to food as a theme.
For some, it is the greatest way to explore a country, going from market to market, from restaurant to restaurant and chop bar to chop bar.
Gradually, foodie culture has taken on a life of its own. Whether it's being in the know about the hottest restaurants around the world or following favourite chefs on TV or their latest partnerships with hotels or cruise lines, or getting informed about the real and authentic dishes for which destinations are known, travellers are increasingly informed about the culinary experiences available to them wherever they go.
Of course, this means that culinary expertise about a destination is just one more crucial aspect of trip planning.
To break it down, next time you decide to travel spend a little time researching which foods pertain and how you can ‘chop chop’.