Cuisine in Destination Marketing: How Delicious is Your Destination

Abstract

Destination marketing, one of the components of destination competitiveness and sustainability, provides opportunities to achieve and ensure destination competitiveness. In this way, cuisine is considered as a reflection of the culture of a country and its people. As a result, there are a great many ways whereby the product is offered as an attraction and a proper marketing tool in a destination. Cuisine can be regarded as a sort of niche or alternative tourism. Because it supplies destination experience, it has been included in travel and tourism business as a new or supportive sector recently. In this study, it is essential to achieve three aims. The first of them is to determine what the tourist's criteria o f destination choice are. ' The second aim of the paper is to determine tourists' perceptions on Ankara, Turkey, especially in relation to destination choice criteria. The third one is to examine the relationship between general consideration and the perception of the tourist about the criteria of destination choice. To evaluate some famous cuisines and restaurant types is aimed as well. In the direction of the aims in the study, a questionnaire form was prepared and applied for tourists. The stage of data collection in the research was carried out during June-August period in 2012. The collected data were analyzed by means of ANOVA. It was found out that the culinary features have had effects on the decision of tourist's destination choice. Additionally, results have revealed that there is a difference between general consideration and the perception on Ankara regarding the criteria of destination choice. It is seen that national and local cuisines are important components in the criteria of destination ch oice as well.