Italian Food and Beverage

When do you think about Italy destination, what do you come to your mind? The cultural and architectural heritage, Florence the “cradle of the Renaissance”, the Venetian Lagoon, the Neapolitan Riviera, Sicily Island, Lake of Como  and the last but not least the Italian Food. Pizza, Pasta, Pesto, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and so on. The wide range of products and its varieties determine the regional cooking, each region is specialized in its particular dishes in terms of uniqueness and originality and also in beverage. In this space I would like to talk about the Italian cuisine and the connection with  the tourism experience, underlining the necessity to have managerial practice in this field to be competitive in the tourist market as compared with France, the most competitor of Italian cuisine.

The importance of food and eating out on holidays is an essential part of the tourism experience (Hjalager and Richards 2002). Local food and beverages play an important role in introducing tourists new different   traditions at destinations. But what we have to look at is not only the quality of the food but also the managerial issues to develop a successful model for the Italian Food and beverage area.

In Italy, we have the quality of the product but sometimes we need organization skills and capabilities, comparing with the other word competitor.

Compared to the destination tourist proposal Food and Beverage industries represent  an important element  of the overall product, that helps to lead customer satisfaction for the holiday experience.

 In Italy exist a fragmented offer of restaurants, where sometimes they don’t have managerial practice. On the one hand, we have a wide range of restaurant with a family management style, where often the chef is both owner and manager. It is necessary to separate the roles, to develop a managerial model and also to study the marketing strategies.

On the other hand, we could find a wide range of four/five star restaurant with managerial and marketing  strategies. Indeed, they don’t have only the restaurant but they broaden their offer with a farm, wine cellar and kitchen school. .

Another important think is to understand the motivators for consumption of Food and Beverages in a tourist destination like: physical motivators, cultural motivators ,interpersonal motivators and status prestige motivators (McIntosh et al. 1995). I would like to talk about this subject in the next entry.

References

Hjalager , A.,Richards, G., 2002. Tourism and Gastronomy. Routledge, London.

McIntosh, R., Goeldner, C., Ritchie, J., 1995.Tourism Principles, Practices, Philosophiess, 7^th ed. Wiley, New York.