Abstract
The current chapter theoretically aims to reveal the relationship between culinary festivals and destination branding, focusing on studies investigating aspects of culinary festivals such as festival experience, quality, and motivation in the relationship between the culinary festivals and destination brand equity. In this chapter, the role and importance of culinary festivals in developing destination brand equity are theoretically discussed through reviewing hospitality and tourism literature. Theoretical results of the present chapter indicate that some topics of culinary festival studies such as food experience, food quality, and food festival motivation from a tourist perspective have played an essential role in how increasing core constructs of destination brand equity which included destination brand image, destination brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand loyalty.
TopIntroduction
Today in the competitive market, all destination wants to have a strong brand by developing destination image, destination quality, awareness, and loyalty which are widely used in measuring destination brand equity. To do this, the tourism destinations are using local attractions of destination that are regarded as push and pull motivational factors in attracting visitors to destination (Kodaş & Sekizkardeş, 2022). Events and festivals have huge potential to be a core constituent of the growing hospitality and tourism industries (Getz, 2008; Getz & Page, 2016) as they are one of the major tourist attractions (Felsenstein, & Fleischer, 2003). Hence, all tourism destination has started to organize events or festivals. By organizing kinds of festivals, destinations make significant contributions to their destination familiarity and build a strong image in tourist mind about the destination (Jago Chalip, Brown, Mules, and Ali, 2003). Festivals provide the festival attendees with some kinds of experiences such as social, leisure, cultural and culinary experiences (Axelsen & Swan, 2010; Harb, Fowler, Chang, Blum, & Alakaleek, 2019). Festivals are considered as one of the effective destination strategical destination promotional tools as they are a valuable and significant source for destination development. Festivals are very important and special events which could introduce regional culture to their visitors and build a destination brand identity. Culinary festivals are also regarded as a special event which focuses on local food and beverage and assists in enhancing the destination brand strength.
As culinary or gastronomic attractions of destination may be the primary motivation for visiting a different country as suggested by Quan and Wang, (2004) and Mkono, Makwell and Wilson, (2013), today majority of tourism destination in the different region has been using local foods and beverage in their festival which focused culinary or gastronomy. So, food festivals play a key role in determining choice among domestic or international tourists who are interested in different cuisine (Wan & Chan, 2013). Gastronomy or culinary festivals are designated as special events enhancing gastronomy tourism opportunities for the destination and building the image, awareness, and loyalty of the destination (Axelsen & Swan, 2010). A culinary festival is one of the efficient ways to bring people together and provide an opportunity to meet local people and tourists and achieve a better cultural exchange between local people, local producers, and tourists (Organ Koenig-Lewis, Palmer, and Probert, 2015). Besides, culinary festivals allow visitors to share each other’s food experiences (Silkes, 2007). In this book chapter, the comprehensive literature review will be conducted to understand how events and festivals, in particular culinary festivals, can contribute to destination brand equity which has dominant dimensions including brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. This chapter contributes to augment the literature by discussing conceptually the role of culinary festivals in destination brand equity based on studies in relevant literature which linkages between some aspects of culinary festivals studies and destination branding.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Festival: A festival is a “collective experience” where festival goers can be highly influenced by other people who are there with the same purpose and people who shared their experiences (Maisello, Bonetti and Izzo, 2019 AU78: The in-text citation "Maisello, Bonetti and Izzo, 2019" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).
Destination Brand Equity: It can be described as an adaption of Aaker’s (1991) definition of brand equity model to the tourism destination. This brand equity model has four dimensions: awareness, associations/image, perceived quality, loyalty Which are widely accepted in measuring destination brand equity.
Culinary festival: It can be defined as a specific event that offer local food and beverages of destination to the festival-attendees.
Brand Equity: It is defined as ‘a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name, and symbol, which add to or subtract from the value provided by a producer, by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm's customers’ ( Aaker, 1991 ).