The Management and Operation of Food Services - Essay Example

Travel and Tourism is the largest segment of the Hospitality Industry and is comprised of many different businesses. The businesses include gastronomy, transportation, lodging, food and beverages, shopping, entertainment, and recreation. As competition between tourism destinations heightens, local culture is becoming a valuable source of new products and activities to attract and amuse tourists. Gastronomy has a particularly important role to play in this, not only because food is central to the tourist experience, but also because gastronomy has become a significant source of identity formation in postmodern societies. A tourist can identify with certain types of cuisine that he/she encounters on a holiday. As tourists become more mobile, so does the food they eat. Food, culinary styles and the increasing differentiation of dishes and cuisines in tourism destinations have developed. Global drinks and foods are emerging, such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's, and local and regional food is thriving, and new 'fusion foods' are also being created to feed the 'global soul' (Iyer 2000). Tourists themselves are contributing to gastronomic mobility, by creating a demand in their own countries for foods they have encountered abroad. Gastronomy has developed considerably through the years. Gastronomy is not only extremely difficult to define, but the term, just like 'culture', has become more heavily laden over time. As Scarpato shows, the original definition of gastronomy has broadened in recent years. The Encyclopdia Britannica (2000) defines gastronomy as: 'the art of selecting, preparing, serving, and enjoying fine food'. Gastronomy was for the nobility, but over time the concept included the 'peasant food' typical of regional and local cuisine. The serving and consumption of food has become a global industry, of which tourism is an important part. Mass tourist resorts can often be divided spatially on the basis of cuisine. One can spot English tourists in English pubs, German tourists in the Bierkeller. Some tourists still engage in the habit of taking their own food with them on holiday. Food is a means of forging and supporting identities, principally because what we eat and the way we eat are such basic aspects of our culture. Given the strong relationship between food and identity, it is not surprising that food becomes an important place marker in tourism promotion. One of the basic reasons for this is the strong relationship between certain localities and certain types of food. As Hughes (1995:114) points out there is a 'notion of a natural relationship between a region's land, its climatic conditions and the character of food it produces. It is this geographical diversity which provides for the regional distinctiveness in culinary traditions and the evolution of a characteristic heritage.' This link between location and gastronomy has been used in a number of ways in tourism, including promotional efforts based on distinctive or 'typical' regional or national foods. In a gastronomic landscape, the forces of globalization and localization are both exerting pressures on our eating habits. The rise of fast food has come to characterize the globalization of culture and economy encapsulated in the term 'McDonaldization' (Ritzer 1993). McDonald's franchises more than 25,000 outlets in 120 countries worldwide. The Big Mac has become a culinary product that it is used to measure the purchasing power parity of national currencies (Ong 1997). The cultural capital that we develop on holiday regarding foreign food is utilized in our leisure time to develop our identity. The fact that many people seek the comfort of the familiar on holiday is one factor that helps to support the spread of global foods. At the same time, however, there is a countervailing force towards more localization in what Castells call the 'space of places' - the local environments in which the bulk of the world's population live their everyday lives. A resurgence of the local is also being stimulated by growing resistance to what many perceive to be the homogenizing forces of globalization, Disneyfication and McDonaldization. Food structures the day of a tourist. A large proportion of most tourist experiences are spent either consuming food and drink, or deciding what and where to consume. However, many of these experiences are taken for granted, because we often regard eating as a necessity rather than a leisure activity. A task in developing and marketing gastronomic tourism, therefore, is to find ways to add value to the eating experience in order to make it memorable. Gastronomic experiences encourage tourists to consume the same gastronomic products in their own countries of origin. Gastronomic tourism strongly fosters the export of traditional and unique agro-food products. In Italy, for instance, tourism was the key to successful exports of olive oil, pasta, mozzarella cheese, etc. (Hjalager and Richards, 2002). The gastronomic tourism system covers accommodation suppliers, tour operators, primary regional resources (such as agricultural produce, agricultural products and restaurants) and secondary resources (such as sport activities, visits to artistic and cultural sites, folklore parades, events and exhibitions). A wine route or taste path integrates the typical regional raw materials such as wine and oil with other environmental, cultural and tourist resources to ensure the tourist utilization of the region. The route becomes a common thread linking the tourist/consumer and the tourist supply system. Tourist motivations are diverse and related to the individual's needs. The route/path presemts scale economies that are not available to individual enterprises: system economies related to information management and system economies related to specialized communication channels. The structure of a gastronomic route/path involves the following major elements: organizing committee, management committee, disciplinary regulations, signage system, tourist guides and illustrative, advertising and promotional materials. There are two quality levels which are required. The first level refers to the individual enterprises associated with the route/path and two crucial aspects of the tourist experience: quality of the product offered (regional food products) and the second level refers to the overall quality of the route/path, to its organization and management. This concerns the quality of the tourist components of the visit such as activities and accommodation. Quality issues are primordial. The company must comply with standard checking and control procedures, as these are crucial for the success of the network. The organizers can do standard checking and control procedures of products. The food associations, the Chambers of Commerce and trade associations can help in maintaining the quality levels. The linkage of demand and supply can be achieved through implementing the following steps: a.) supply inventory (both gastronomic and tourism elements, identification of relevant internal/external actors (e.g. enterprises and public sector/community groups); assessment of tourism market needs relevant to the products available in the region and identification of appropriate communication channels relevant to identified market segments. The bulk of the marketing effort directed at developing rural gastronomy is aimed at establishing and increasing the 'authenticity' of the local cuisine. An important aspect of developing authentic local products is an appeal to nostalgia and the virtues of a traditional, simpler and more wholesome rural past. The agricultural landscape will have two supply values for the tourism industry: the direct supply of agricultural products for the tourism industry's consumption, and the indirect supply - via land management, cultivation and maintenance - of landscape for tourists. References: Antonioli Corigliano, M. (1996) 'Risorse economiche dal turismo culturale in Italia: ruolo e prospettive', in Decongestione e capillarit. Un nuovo equilibrio per il turismo culturale italiano nel XXI secolo, Naples: FAI. Encyclopdia Britannica (2000) www.eb.com, accessed December 2000. Hjalager, Anne and Greg Richards. (2002). Tourism and Gastronomy.London: Routledge. Iyer, P. (2000) The Global Soul, London: Bloomsbury. Ong, L.L. (1997) 'Burgernomics: the economics of the Big Mac standard', Journal of International Money and Finance, 16: 865-878. Ritzer, G. (1993) The McDonaldization of Society.Thousand Oaks:Pine Forge Press. Read More