Question

Discuss how external environmental trends (e.g. media trends, technology) affect the development of new/emerging products and services in food tourism destinations.

Answer 1

The changes in the external environment will have impacts in most of the industries. It will negatively or positively influence businesses. As like, the food tourism destinations are also affected by the changes that occur in the external environment. This can be easily conveyed through examples.

In the last few decades, food tourism has received a lot of attention from the online media, especially from social media. Writers in online media, more particularly the influencers in social media, started to write about local eateries, local recipes, special dishes etc of different places. This attracted more people to these destinations. Now it has become a trend for the eatery/restaurants to market through social media to attract food lovers.

There is another timely example. Consider the case of Corona. Food has nothing to do with the spread of the virus. Though people are worried to get into a public restaurant and dine. Corona, an external factor, has affected the food tourism destinations across the globe.

Factors such as government policies, tax changes, changing attitude in people etc can also affect the food tourism industry a lot.