European University of Lefke (EUL) Head of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Department Asst. Prof. Dr. İlker Türkeri represented European University of Lefke at “The Conference On Managing Tourism Across Continents 2022” with his work “Gastronomy as a Destination Attraction Element”.

Providing information about his work, Türkeri shared the following information; With the changing demands of the tourism market and visitors, alternative tourism types and new holiday understandings have emerged instead of sea-sand-sun (3s) holidays. Gastronomy tourism is also seen as one of the alternative tourism types formed as a result of bringing together new touristic products in order to give a new direction to the traditional holiday understanding. Since countries have their own eating and drinking cultures that make up their own cuisines, the visited destination offers unique touristic experiences with its gastronomic culture. As tourists want to experience new and unique experiences, gastronomy becomes one of the most important visit purposes. In the context of world tourism, all countries or regions with gastronomic resources are trying to develop their own gastronomic attractions in order to gain competitive advantage in the market and to get the most share from the tourism cake. When the development process of tourism is examined, services related to gastronomy have been seen as supportive services for a long time and are not considered as elements that can attract tourists to destinations alone. However, studies conducted in recent years show that foods and beverages belonging to culture, region and history have the power to attract tourists to the destination. However, tasting food and beverage has been seen as the main purpose in tourism movements, which are defined as a developing and new trend, and these tourism activities have been defined as gastronomy tourism, culinary tourism and food tourism.