Guest editorial

Citation

Vukovic, D.B., Vrontis, D., Shams, S.M.R. and Hasan, M.R. (2021), "Guest editorial", Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-11-2020-0107

Technological transformation in culinary tourism: a stakeholder causal scope analysis for knowledge management, destination identity and place management

Culinary-tourism or food-tourism is defined as tourism that offers tourists’ new tastes, flavours, qualities, culture, inheritance, local culinary ideas and arts, traditions and authentic food and beverage experiences (The World Food Travel Association, 2019). Culinary tourism has strong influence and benefits for destination competitiveness (Demirović et al., 2018; Henderson, 2009) and is one of the major motivations for travel (Vujko et al., 2019; Fox, 2007; Hall and Mitchell, 2005; Wolf, 2002). Food, as one of the destination-specific or place-specific key characteristics, has been receiving increased attention from researchers to promote a tourist location/place as part of the overall components that collectively develop a destination brand (Vukovic et al., 2019; Williams et al., 2014). Additionally, place-specific food culture also significantly attracts tourists and enriches the awareness of that culture and the place among its wider local, regional and international target audiences. This process is result of the convergence between gastronomy and tourism as an important transition stage in the overall place management process. It concerns the leisure and tourism service sector, from a product driven to a customer-driven strategy, where the main value driver is the experience of the tourist (Mason and Paggiaro, 2012).

A key focus of this special issue is to explore how culinary tourism, as part of overall tourism initiatives, can affect the visibility/awareness of a place (region or city) as a destination, to enrich the destination’s brand image to contribute to the place (destination) management and further development. In such roles of culinary tourism, considering the impact of:

• technological transformation of culinary tourism; and

• stakeholder relationship management in culinary tourism would have considerable implications to underpin the management of culinary tourisms.

For example, based on the contemporary technological tools and platforms (e.g. social media), analysing the “cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions as a stakeholder causal scope (SCS)” (Shams, 2016, p. 141) would be valuable to explore new insights on stakeholders’ expectation (s) and experience about a tourism destination. Analysing and understanding such SCSs would be instrumental to influence stakeholders’ knowledge, centred on those stakeholder-specific new insights, to underpin destination brand identity and place management. In this context, this special issue aims to present novel insights on the impact of technological transformation of culinary tourism and stakeholder relationship management and its impact on stakeholder (e.g. tourists’) knowledge management to enhance destination brand identity to underpin the overall place management dynamism. The special issue presents five papers that advance our knowledge in this SCS-centred research and practice area in place management and development. We now briefly present the core aspects of these five papers.

The paper by D. Vrontis, et al., titled, “Culinary attributes and technological utilisation as drivers of place authenticity and branding: the case of Vascitour, Naples”, aims to identify and explain the culinary tourism’s regional features that may support the development of stakeholder relationship management with insights from a territorial system. The authors believe that new technology-enhanced insights into tourists’ experience (like Facebook, TripAdvisor, websites, blog, etc). will bring positive impulse to regional development strategies and strengthens both the staakeholders’ perception and the brand image of a destination. Lessons from the paper suggest that “eating with and like a local” appears to be vital in designing authentic brand image in Naples.

Similar technologies are analysed in the study titled, “QR codes as a tool for receiving feedback about guests’ satisfaction at destinations”, by N. Vuksanovic, et al. Their research studied the impact of the use of quick response (QR) code application among the tourists on their satisfaction at a destination regarding information about restaurants’ offer. Authors used a regression model (in program SPSS Statistics version 23.0) to test 414 questionnaires from cities in Serbia (Belgrade and Novi Sad). According to their findings, there is a positive effect of using QR codes on the overall satisfaction at a destination. However, authors also found that this effect depends on individual, demographic and economic factors of tourists. Such kind of research has been very rare so far and it is advised to conduct further research on cross-cultural levels or in other industries.

The paper “Creating brand confidence to gastronomic consumers through social networks – a report from Novi Sad”. Here, T. Gajic et al., analyses the impact of Instagram, on the choice of catering facility and promoting alternative types of food. The study has a purpose to discover the extent to which it builds confidence to gastronomic consumers and the brand of the associated product or service. The survey sample includes 155 participants from local population in Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia (with sixteen nationalities living in the city), nominated for the European Capital of Culture for 2021. According to authors’ findings, the population in this city have great confidence in Instagram, following posts before choosing a catering facility or food. The paper also offers the following highlights: firstly, the use of technology is becoming increasingly important in destination competition and in the offer of services of the destination. Secondly, technologies enable greater transparency of tourism services (e.g. consumer comments, available photos and other information related to services). Thirdly, it contributes to the overall picture of the state of service in tourism (like gastronomy) culture and tradition of a specific area.

TripAdvisor platform was also examined in the research “Using deep learning to investigate digital behaviour in culinary tourism, by R. Hasan et al. The study relates to the impact of the TripAdvisor platform on digital consumer behaviour related to Chinese restaurants. Authors used the deep learning approach of 4,000 photos of nine Chinese restaurants posted on TripAdvisor’s website and open-questionnaire survey of 125 Chinese respondents, to analyse motivation and customers’ wish to visit these restaurants. For the instrument, this study used image recognition by Inception V3, Google’s deep learning network to make 12 hierarchical image clusters. According to the results, using of deep learning system will provide additional information in culinary tourism.

The previous paper, titled, “Technological transformation, culinary tourism and stakeholder engagement: emerging trends from a systematic literature review”, by F. Schimperna, et al., is based on the systematic literature review of two-decades, focussing on technological transformation for the stakeholder causal scope (SCS) analysis in culinary tourism. Compared to previous studies (with testing of case studies in different regions), this paper is based on a longitudinal study of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) 2018 list of 2-, 3-, 4- and 4*- star journal articles, accumulating relevant literature within the field, and the Scopus database as relevant source. The purpose of analysis is to determine the impact of technological transformation to food as a cultural phenomenon for destination brand identity and management as a new approach of (SCS) analysis in culinary tourism. Authors found that technological transformation knowledge in culinary tourism has greater and growing importance, especially today in the time of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. The theoretical contribution of this paper is novel, given that there are very few papers that study this issue by analysing the cross-disciplinary and cross-functional fields of technology, culinary tourism and stakeholder engagement.

This special issue contains five papers that have wider scientific and practical contribution. Firstly, it reduces a specific gap in the extant literature in the transition process of tourism management between culinary tourism, technology usage, stakeholder knowledge management and tourism sites as destination brand. Recently, only few papers discussed this issue. Secondly, it offers practical solutions for stakeholders (for example, from the cases in Naples, Belgrade and Novi Sad) to take advantage of technological solutions that positively affect the transparency and efficiency to underpin the experience of gastro-tourists. Further, this special issue will also be useful to tourism destination managers who wish to create future strategies based on the experiences of different destinations in managing culinary tourism and destination brand identity. Finally, the diverse insights of these papers will encourage numerous researchers in the future to analyse at the intersection of gastro-touristic-technological-stakeholder management aspects of tourism and hospitality, to underpin destination brand management research and practice.