Dai Bin | How to build a world-class food tourism city

On September 21, the 2024 Food Tourism Development Conference was held in Hengyang, Hunan. Dean Dai Bin of our college was invited to deliver a keynote speech entitled "How to Build a World-Class Food Tourism City". The full text is shared as follows:

If consumption is the key to understanding the tourism economy, then food is the easiest lock to open. Since the first conference was held in Chenzhou last year, food tourism has attracted great attention from the tourism, catering, cultural circles and destination cities. From the data, the supporting role of food for the destination is becoming more and more obvious. During the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday just passed, the top ten provinces and cities in terms of tourist reception, such as Guangdong, Shandong, Sichuan, Henan, Jiangsu, Hebei, Hubei, Hunan, Zhejiang and Anhui, received a total of 60.2% of domestic tourists in the country, and the proportion of catering in the tourism consumption structure has steadily increased. The "three districts and one circle" of endogenous tourist attractions, resorts, historical and cultural blocks and business districts in the city, as well as the rural tourist spots embedded in the urban agglomeration have always been the most important leisure scenes and consumption spaces. 86.4% of tourists will choose to go to a city because of food, or experience the characteristic urban space because of food. Xi'an, Chengdu, Guiyang, Nanjing, Suzhou, Datong, Shunde, Changsha, Shantou and Fuzhou have attracted tourists with their food and have become the first echelon of food tourism cities recognized by tourists. The study found that the conditions for cultivating food tourism cities are ripe and the time window is opening. Focusing on the construction of a tourism power and the high-quality development of the tourism industry, scientifically answering the guiding ideology, construction path and key tasks of world-class food tourism cities is a realistic issue that governments at all levels and the tourism industry must face.

Market construction:

Popular cuisine or tailor-made travel?

From the perspective of tourism consumption structure in the past 20 years, the proportion of catering expenditure has remained stable at around 23%. In 2019, domestic tourists spent 953.2 yuan per person per trip and 222.1 yuan on catering. It can be estimated that the potential market for food tourism is about 1.33 trillion yuan. Together with the catering expenditure of inbound tourists of 85.87 billion yuan, the total catering expenditure of tourism in the country is 1.42 trillion yuan, accounting for 30.4% of the total catering revenue in the country that year. According to the data from the first three quarters of this year, total tourism expenditure and catering consumption will reach a record high. According to the data from the world's major tourist countries in 2023, the average daily expenditure of domestic business tourists in the United States is 352.4 US dollars, of which catering consumption accounts for 29.0%, 10 percentage points higher than that of my country. The average daily expenditure of domestic tourists in Spain is 1278.0 euros per person per trip, of which catering expenditure accounts for 26.8%. The direct expenditure of tourists in restaurants and bars in the UK accounts for more than 17% of the national domestic tourists' expenditure. If the catering consumption in hotels, resorts, shopping malls and other scenes is added, the proportion will be even higher. In comparison, there is still a lot of room for expansion in domestic tourists' spending on dining.

Food tourism should have both the flavor of fireworks and culture, and young customers also need a sense of technology without boundaries. In fact, tourists' need for food is not age-specific. Tourists over 65 years old spend 28.5% on food and beverage, higher than the 25.5% of tourists aged 14-25. Unlike what we imagined, the proportion of food and beverage expenditures for business travelers and health care tourists is not high, only less than 20%. Merchants need a thick enough market to stratify consumption, because each additional personalization means losing part of the potential market and increasing customer maintenance costs. "The better the restaurant, the fewer the menu" is a vivid portrayal of this theory. Food tourism with Chinese characteristics must and can only be built on the reality of mass tourism and mass catering. The idea that a food tourism city can be built by building a few high-star hotels, high-end restaurants, bars, and snow cafes and developing some high-end membership systems is not supported by experience and does not work in practice.

The vast majority of tourists, especially self-guided tourists, will choose popular food and special snacks as their needs upgrade. Popular food means easily available ingredients, simple preparation, affordable prices and wide popularity. In recent years, waves of popular tourist destinations have popular food behind them, and even directly linked popular food with cities, such as Zibo barbecue, Tianshui spicy hot pot, Jilin pot-wrapped pork, Hengdong local cuisine, etc. The RV self-driving, health travel and leisure vacation customers who are moving from concept introduction to market development still have the most consumption scenes centered around food. There are also food streets such as Hengyang's Jinzhong, Yanming Creek, Nanhua University and Leiyang Nanzheng. Those who are experienced in food will also go to Jinbu Lane in Shigu District. Every city may have such an old alley, without modern construction and well-designed lighting, and even a shabby feeling, but it carries the historical memory of a city and accompanies the youth of several generations. Wenheyou and Nanshannan, what is old is the scene, what is displayed is the memory, and what is gathered is the youth. It is these popular night markets shared by local residents and foreign tourists that have become a growing attraction and new driving force for urban tourism with their accumulated sense of vicissitudes and the sense of fashion injected by young people.

If conditions permit, everyone would like to have a personalized, high-quality customized dining experience, including a superior geographical location, an elegant dining environment, a well-known chef, fresh and unique ingredients, as well as historical legends and stories, just as the three-star Michelin promotes "Going to a city for a restaurant". With the improvement of people's living standards and the enrichment of travel experience, more and more tourists want to eat not only enough, but also eat well, eat exquisitely, and eat culturally during their trips. I still remember the school anniversary buffet held by the State University of New York in the dinosaur exhibition hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art more than ten years ago, with ancient dinosaur fossils, exquisite food, and youthful college students singing a cappella. At that moment, nature, culture, tourism, and food were so perfectly combined that I stubbornly believed that this was what urban tourism should be like. In fact, we cannot allow every tourist to enjoy delicious food under the reflection of crystal chandeliers, to the sound of violins, in front of white tablecloths and exquisite tableware, but we can definitely ensure food safety, process standards and service quality, so that catering can become refined and elegant for the general public and become a culinary memory that tourists will always remember.

Brand building:

Local or international?

Mass tourism has entered a new stage of comprehensive development, and the trend of tourist classification and consumption stratification has become increasingly apparent. Those customers with rich travel experience, more leisure time and more consumption budget will choose international tourist destinations with developed infrastructure, perfect reception conditions and strong cultural atmosphere. They are willing and able to pay for seasonal local ingredients, exquisite production products and elegant dining environment, thereby promoting the internationalization of local cuisine. More tourists will emphasize cost-effectiveness and tend to choose small and medium-sized cities and county central towns with strong fireworks. With the entry of post-95 young people and small town travelers, reverse, parallel substitution, white-label and other travel methods have been created. They look for local gourmet restaurants and vegetable markets in niche destinations, and also order local delicacies from passing stations through Meituan and Ele.me platforms during high-speed rail journeys, and share them on social platforms of their peers, interweaving into a unique food map of the times.

Once upon a time, McDonald's, KFC, and Master Kong instant noodles were all the fashion we pursued. Beijing's "Lao Mo Restaurant" and the Western restaurants of five-star hotels such as Heping in Shanghai were even more legendary, becoming cultural symbols through "Sunny Days" and "Flowering Flowers". Driven by the demonstration of international catering brands, local enterprises and time-honored brands began to re-examine traditional production processes and service methods. From Ronghua Chicken to Dapanji, from Liuzhou's snail noodles to Lanzhou beef noodles, generations of catering entrepreneurs hope to promote local dishes to the whole country and open catering to the world. More catering companies have greatly extended the industrial chain of traditional catering through standardized operations and industrialized production, enriched the product spectrum, and formed catering brands of different levels and types, such as Qingfeng Baozi, Jude Huatian, Quanjude, and Donglaishun. Although food tourists hope to stick to the traditional catering culture so that each dish can have more hand feel and wok flavor, whether we like it or not, central kitchens, pre-prepared dishes, and robot cooking will inevitably come with the process of catering industrialization, and bring more catering options to residents and tourists. Of course, brand associations supported by industrialized production methods are not the only option for the internationalization of food. How to make catering and food carry the nostalgic memory and local culture in the process of modernization has become the guiding ideology of product research and development and business innovation. The pursuit of food science and art, respect for food managers, banquet designers, chefs and service teams, and positive interaction with nature, humanities and community residents have become increasingly important considerations for the internationalization of food tourism.

With the increase of business, sightseeing and vacationing people, the right to define food has gradually shifted from local residents to foreign tourists. For example, when Michelin publishes the list of restaurants in Beijing, it often questions "Does it really taste like Beijing food?" The only "three-star" restaurant is Taizhou cuisine. If you think about the evaluation position of foreigners, especially inbound tourists from Western countries, it is understandable. Food, food, beauty comes before eating. Is beauty subjective or objective? Or is it both subjective and objective? It is enough for graduate students in aesthetics to write countless dissertations. For gourmets, is it "one body and land" or "when in Rome, do as the Romans do"? Is it "don't eat after the season" or "out-of-season is expensive"? It is also a topic that can be discussed repeatedly. Just like we are accustomed to drinking hot water, it may look strange in the eyes of foreign tourists. The first thing inbound tourists, especially those from Europe and the United States, do when they enter the hotel is to find an ice bucket and add ice cubes, so that the national standards for the star rating and evaluation of tourist hotels, the equipment of guest room supplies, the industry standards for quality control and the technical standards of international brands have put forward corresponding requirements. Of course, these standards are recommended rather than mandatory. For hotel, restaurant, bar operators and food route promotion agencies, which business model to choose ultimately depends on their market positioning and business strategy.

In contemporary tourism experience, tourists increasingly emphasize the cultural connotation, cultural exchange and civilization dialogue of food. With the sinking of the market, the upgrading of demand and the rich supply, tourists are more willing and have the conditions to emphasize the localized food experience and cultural experience. They are no longer satisfied with just tasting special food in hotels, restaurants and bars, but hope to integrate into the local life atmosphere through food, feel the local history, culture and folk customs, and enrich their travel experience. They are willing to spend more time, energy and budget to understand the source of ingredients, production process, inheritance story and related festivals, celebrations and living habits behind each dish. In this sense, food has become a key factor in the competitiveness of urban tourism and an important bridge for tourists to connect with local culture and dialogue with civilization. In the process of tasting food, tourists may even participate in the production process of food and discuss ways to improve quality with chefs and food managers. According to the special survey on food tourism by the China Tourism Research Institute, 21.8% of tourists believe that food tourism is a journey to deeply experience local culture. 59.3% of tourists said that if they have the opportunity, they are willing to further understand the food culture of the destination. 26.2% of tourists are willing to learn the cooking skills and methods of the special food of the destination.

Product construction:

A famous restaurant dinner or a special snack?

Although no one has to eat out every day, let alone attend a state banquet, the legendary Manchu and Han banquets, French banquets, and legendary restaurants, ingredients, and drinks are still desirable. In the process of building the image of an international tourist destination, state banquets, banquets, and famous restaurants often become cultural elements that support and complement each other together with opera houses, museums, libraries, large theme parks, music festivals, and shopping centers. In business trips and leisure vacations, food is the easiest topic to communicate and the most unforgettable experience. A tourist destination is the sum of the living environment and a new space for a better life shared by residents and tourists. Every city committed to building a world-class tourist destination needs the support of historical and cultural blocks, resorts, and business districts, including top restaurants, rather than just tourist attractions and cultural and museum venues. In this sense, first-class restaurants and food are standard for world tourist cities. It is hoped that the World Federation of Chinese Cuisine can give full play to the advantages of market entities and catering talents, guide the planning and construction of urban food with a global perspective, strengthen cooperation with travel agents and urban tourism promotion agencies, and jointly promote the steady and long-term development of high-quality food tourism.

In the minds of mass tourists, food is more associated with local cuisine and special snacks. Some snacks are what locals are proud of, and tourists are willing to share, such as Guangzhou's morning tea and sugar water, Guilin rice noodles, Nanjing duck blood vermicelli soup, Huainan beef soup, Hengyang Tutou bowl, etc. Some snacks may not be familiar to tourists, such as Beijing's bean juice. Some cities are quite helpless about the naming of "place name + food", such as Lanzhou ramen, which is called Lanzhou beef noodles locally, and has its own official standards and folk reputation. Food includes delicious dishes provided by restaurants, as well as drinks provided by bars, teahouses and cafes. In many international cities, roadside cafes are suitable places for both socializing and leisure for citizens, and beautiful scenery for tourists. They are also cultural landmarks that make people linger in the cities they visit, such as the Left Bank in Paris, Kliska Lane in Prague, Hengshan Road in Shanghai, New York Cafe in Budapest, Central Cafe in Vienna, and Swan Cafe in Brussels where Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, and of course, Nanhuali and Lejie in Hengyang. It is these restaurants, bars, cafes, bookstores, record stores, mailboxes, newsstands, street performers, leisure citizens and pedestrians who pass by in a hurry that together constitute the small and beautiful space, small and exquisite projects and small and warm scenes of urban tourism. Perhaps when we have traveled around the world, we will know that what can make us slow down and experience the peaceful years is not only the past time and ancient villages and towns, but also the prosperous cities that are compatible with modernity and tradition.

Food needs to be presented in the name of tourism, with profound cultural heritage, persistent quality control, and the warmest attitude, so that thousands of tourists can empathize with the city. Food tourism and urban tourism require conscious image construction and promotion, but cultural heritage, quality of life and tourist satisfaction are the internal logic. It is hoped that promotion agencies and destination management departments will sincerely agree with this concept: cities are shared civilizations and shared qualities, and tourism development depends highly on the warmth of equal service to the majority of people, rather than the intensity of satisfying the powerful elites. This requires us to listen to the voices of tourists with greater patience, meet the needs of citizens and tourists for a better life with more scientific urban planning, industrial planning and spatial layout, and promote the modernization of governance systems and governance capabilities with greater wisdom. From the development cases of international and domestic urban tourism, "Uniquely Singapore", "Best of all, It's in Hong Kong" and "Hangzhou, Living Poetry" all point to quality, warmth and shared life, including food. The construction of a food tourism city also requires a high level of publicity and marketing combination. Hunan Satellite TV's "Go to Hunan for a Tasty Place" and the Food Tourism Development Conference are both good examples. At this conference, we followed the routine to release cases of food tourism integration and innovative development, and held the "Fire Dance Hengzhou" cultural theme tasting banquet, all of which are for the construction of a food tourism city to provide more practical samples for reference.

Hengyang is the "hometown of Chinese local cuisine" and the "first city of Hunan stir-fry". It is the birthplace of nationally renowned chain brands such as Chef Fei, Smoke Times, and Caigenxiang, as well as high-end banquet centers such as Quyuan and Lufu. I hope that everyone will go to see "Yanfeng Misty Rain" and "Shigu Jiangshan" after business meetings, experience the new Chinese-style banquets here, and taste the local special snacks. A big meal is about ceremony, while snacks are better in daily life. The warmth of daily life is mostly about rejecting the drama of sudden surprises, such as the warm sun in winter, the evening breeze in summer, and the curling smoke rising from the mother's old house when the boy returns from school. Mr. Ziqing wrote in "Moonlight on the Lotus Pond": But I think this is just right - a deep sleep is essential, and a nap also has its own flavor. It is like a micro-portrait of Hengyang food, and also a freehand painting of a world-class food tourism city.

Author | Dai Bin Editor | Liu Xin Source | China Tourism Academy (Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism) Please indicate the author and source for reprinting