In the contemporary tourism landscape, the 'Gastronomy Tourism' is one of most instrumental aspects of experiential tourism, which provides the destinations with a prospect of utilizing the local food culture as its competitive advantage. This study aims to examine the impact of gastronomy tourism on destination competitiveness in Bangladesh, by focusing on the perspectives of the policy, practices and priorities of indigenous culinary systems of Bangladesh. In doing so, this study adopts a qualitative research design by utilizing 30 semi-structured interviews with the tourists and the stakeholders, while analyzing the data by using thematic data analysis method. The findings of this research underscore that Bangladesh has not fully utilized the potential because of lack of institutional coordination, policy integration, and infrastructural limitations, despite its Bangladesh rich and diverse culinary heritage, which is of strong appeal to experience-oriented tourists. Instantaneously, indigenous culinary systems of Bangladesh demonstrated a high potential to improve the destination image, tourist satisfaction and community-based economic opportunities. The study implies to establish the gastronomy tourism a sustainable destination tourism option of Bangladesh by fostering strategic alignment of culinary systems with the tourism governance pathways.
Md. Mehedi Hasan Sawon (Thu,) studied this question.