Tourism marketing of the Autonomous Communities of Spain to promote gastronomy as part of their destination branding

Abstract

Gastronomy is a value proposition to attract tourist. Therefore, the Spanish Autonomous Communities use it to promote themselves as destination branding. They do this by pointing out the value of their popular cuisine, which is part of their cultural identity. For this reason, the Autonomous Communities use gastronomic tourism marketing to promote themselves as a destination branding. Therefore, we have carried out a research through their wbesites to know how they apply it. We have done this with qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The qualitative methodology allowed us to understand how the Autonomous Communities use tourism marketing to promote gastronomy as part of their cultural identity. However, quantitative methodology provided us with information on what types and tactics of gastronomic tourism marketing are most used by the Autonomous Communities. In this way, the main conclusion we obtained was that the Spanish regional adninistration still not sufficiently aware of the importance of a correct application of gastronomic tourism marketing to promote their territories, since we have detected deficiencies in specific actions related to training, events and the Price.