Chefs’ Visibility on the Official South African Tourism Website

Abstract

The objective of this study was to expound on the importance of food tourism as an important tourism sub-sector in which the figure of the chef has become an important marketing tool for destinations. Celebrity chefs enjoy worldwide renown and their image contributes to a destination’s tourism potential. A tourism website can act as the tourism window to the country by providing all the necessary travel information necessary for planning the trip. It also serves to market the country by highlighting its attractions, covering all sectors including food tourism. In terms of methodology, this article analyzes the visibility of the figure of the chef and food tourism on South African Tourism website as a secondary source of data and insights. The results show a lack of visibility of chefs (and more generally, the absence of food tourism topics) on the website. The study recommends utilizing the website to enhance and valorize the role of food tourism and especially that of chefs in the country’s tourism sector to reflect its burgeoning potential and nature as well as its new-found importance for attracting tourists to destinations. By implication, it emphasizes the fact that chefs do matter in food tourism.

Keywords

• tourism
• food tourism
• chefs
• gastronomy
• tourism destinations
• internet
• websites