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A food festival is a festival, that features food, often produce, as its central theme. These festivals have been a means of uniting communities through celebrations of harvests and giving thanks for a plentiful growing season.
Food festivals throughout the world are often based on traditional farming techniques and the seasons of the year. Food festivals are related to food culture of an area, whether through the preparation of food served or the time period in which the festival is celebrated. Food festivals are considered strengthening agents for local cultural heritage, and simultaneously celebrate this cultural heritage while also commodifying it for a national or international audience. [1] While historically aligned with culturally significant food harvesting periods, contemporary food festivals are usually associated with businesses entities or nonprofit organizations and engage a great deal of marketing for their festivals, since their success is measured off how much revenue they generate for the local community, region, or entity putting on the event. [2] Modern food festivals are also a large part of the food tourism industry, which uses food festivals and regional cuisine to support the broader tourism industry of a particular locality. [1]
Food festivals are quickly becoming part of a vast food tourism industry. Food tourism itself has become an important part of the tourism industry worldwide, and the presence of food festivals shown to support local industry development. [3] Food festivals are an important part of destination branding for many regions, creating an event-based reason for individuals to visit otherwise unattractive localities and promote local products and services outside of an urban product environment. [3] Several case studies have shown that food festivals can potentially improve social sustainability while also heavily supporting the tourism and hospitality industries. [4] Food tourism is also an important reason why people attend food festivals around the world. [5] Studies have shown that engagement with food tourism indicates that an individual will attend festivals again in the future, indicating a cooperative element to food tourism and food festival attendance.
| Festival name | Type | Country/city | Since | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bankstown Bites Food Festival | Food | Australia | ||
| Hokitika Wildfoods Festival | Food | New Zealand | ||
| Caxton Street Seafood and Wine Festival | Wine festival/Food | Australia | ||
| Good Food & Wine Show | Wine festival/Food | Australia | ||
| Grampians Grape Escape | Wine festival | Australia | ||
| Kings Cross Food and Wine Festival | Wine festival/Food | Australia | ||
| Melbourne Food and Wine Festival | Wine festival/Food | Australia | ||
| Taste Festival | Food | Australia | ||
| Vegfest (AU) | Food | Australia | ||
| Darwin Beer Can Regatta | Beer festival | Australia | ||
| GABS Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers of the Year | Beer festival | Australia | ||
| Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular | Beer festival | Australia | ||
| Schützenfest (Adelaide) | Beer festival | Australia | ||
| Warners Bay Beer Festival | Beer festival | Australia | ||
| Taste of Tasmania | Food | Australia | 1988 | |
| Wellington On a Plate | Food | New Zealand | 2009 | |
| Beervana | Beer Festival | New Zealand | 2001 |
There are several Florida food festivals and New Jersey food festivals. Other festivals include 626 Night Market in Arcadia, California; Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California; Brentwood Cornfest in Brentwood, California; Mushroom Festivals in various locales; the Castroville Artichoke Festival, in Castroville, California; the Stockton Asparagus Festival, in Stockton, California; the ¡Latin Food Festival! in San Diego, California; the Lexington Barbecue Festival in North Carolina; the Posen Potato Festival, in Posen, Michigan; the Norwalk Oyster Festival, in Norwalk, Connecticut, Vaisakhi Festival in Yuba City, California, and the Howell Melon Festival in Howell, Michigan, known for electing the Howell Melon Queen.
Vegetarian food festivals include VegFests in Boston, Massachusetts; Salt Lake City, Utah; and San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; including the premier Boston Vegetarian Food Festival in autumn, an event originally copied from the then already longstanding Toronto Vegetarian Food Fair in Toronto, Ontario. The List of vegetarian festivals includes hundreds of such events in North America, and hundreds elsewhere, also.
| Festival name | Type | Country/city | Since | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jakarta Fashion & Food Festival | Indonesia | |||
| Thapar Food Festival | India | |||
| Osho Monsoon Festival | festival | India | ||
| Qatar International Food Festival | festival | Qatar | 2009 |
| Festival name | Type | Country/city | Since | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Festival de comida de rua Fortaleza | festival | Brazil / Fortaleza | ||
| Festival de comida de rua São Paulo | festival | Brazil / São Paulo | ||
| Mistura | festival | Peru / Lima | 2008 | the largest food festival in Latin America. Held annually. |
Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments.
Agritourism or agrotourism involves any agriculturally based operation or activity that brings visitors to a farm or ranch.
A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.
A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement.
Cultural tourism is a type of tourism in which the visitor's essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience and consume the cultural attractions and products offered by a tourist destination. These attractions and products relate to the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional features of a society that encompasses arts and architecture, historical and cultural heritage, culinary heritage, literature, music, creative industries as well as the living cultures with their lifestyles, value systems, beliefs and traditions.
The Gilroy Garlic Festival was a food festival in the United States, held annually from 1979 to 2019 at Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy, California, on the last full weekend in July. After its cancellation in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a drive-through festival was held on July 23–25 and 30–31 July and August 1, 2021. In April 2022, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association announced the indefinite suspension of the traditional large-format festival, and that it would instead host smaller individual events. In May 2022, the festival was canceled permanently.
Tourism in Mexico is a very important industry. Since the 1960s, it has been heavily promoted by the Mexican government as "an industry without smokestacks". Mexico has traditionally been among the most visited countries in the world according to the World Tourism Organization, and it is the second-most visited country in the Americas, after the United States. In 2017, Mexico was ranked as the sixth-most visited country in the world for tourism activities. Mexico has a significant number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, with the list including ancient ruins, colonial cities, and natural reserves, as well as a number of works of modern public and private architecture. Mexico has attracted foreign visitors beginning in the early nineteenth century, with its cultural festivals, colonial cities, nature reserves and the beach resorts. The nation's temperate climate and unique culture – a fusion of the European and the Mesoamerican – are attractive to tourists. The peak tourism seasons in the country are during December and the mid-Summer, with brief surges during the week before Easter and Spring break, when many of the beach resort sites become popular destinations for college students from the United States.
The Castro Street Fair is a San Francisco LGBT street festival and fair usually held on the first Sunday in October in the Castro neighborhood, the main gay neighborhood and social center in the city. The fair features multiples stages with live entertainment, DJs, food vendors, community-group stalls as well as a curated artisan alley with dozens of Northern California artists. Due to community pressure the fair restructured the organization and partnered with local charities to collect gate donations and partner with groups at the beverages booths to raise money for those charities.
Sustainable tourism is a concept that covers the complete tourism experience, including concern for economic, social, and environmental issues as well as attention to improving tourists' experiences and addressing the needs of host communities. Sustainable tourism should embrace concerns for environmental protection, social equity, and the quality of life, cultural diversity, and a dynamic, viable economy delivering jobs and prosperity for all. It has its roots in sustainable development and there can be some confusion as to what "sustainable tourism" means. There is now broad consensus that tourism should be sustainable. In fact, all forms of tourism have the potential to be sustainable if planned, developed and managed properly. Tourist development organizations are promoting sustainable tourism practices in order to mitigate negative effects caused by the growing impact of tourism, for example its environmental impacts.
Kerala, a state situated on the tropical Malabar Coast of southwestern India, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. Named as one of the ten paradises of the world by National Geographic Traveler, Kerala is famous especially for its ecotourism initiatives and beautiful backwaters. Its unique culture and traditions, coupled with its varied demography, have made Kerala one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Several international agencies ranging from UNESCO to National Geographic have recognised the state's tourism potential. Kerala was named by TIME magazine in 2022 among the 50 extraordinary destinations to explore in its list of the World's Greatest Places. In 2023, Kerala was listed at the 13th spot in The New York Times' annual list of places to visit and was the only tourist destination listed from India.
The Boston Vegetarian Society (BVS) is a non-profit educational organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, with the purpose of promoting and supporting vegetarianism and veganism. It hosts monthly speaking events and an annual vegetarian food festival in the fall.
A music festival is a community event with performances of singing and instrument playing that is often presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality, locality of musicians, or holiday. Music festivals are generally organized by individuals or organizations within networks of music production, typically music scenes, the music industries, or institutions of music education.
Artichoke Festival is a food festival held annually in Monterey, a town in Monterey County of the U.S. State of California. The city, which calls itself the "Artichoke Center of the World", began promoting the artichoke with a festival in 1960, and the festival has grown so large that it has been moved out of the town, into a nearby convention center. Artichoke Festival 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of this celebration.
The Greek Food Festival of Dallas is a food festival held annually in Dallas, Texas (USA), featuring traditional Greek cuisine and Greek culture.
Vibrant Gujarat, also referred to as Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, is a biennial investors' global business event that is held in the state of Gujarat, India. The event is aimed at bringing together business leaders, investors, corporations, thought leaders, policy and opinion makers; the summit is advertised as a platform to understand and explore business opportunities in Gujarat. The summit's primary objective is to promote Gujarat as an attractive investment destination and to facilitate partnerships and collaborations across different sectors. Summit began in 2003 and is now held every two years.
The Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Florida International University, located at the Biscayne Bay Campus in North Miami, Florida in the United States is one of the University's 26 schools and colleges. The University was chartered in 1965 and opened in 1972.
Culinary diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy or food diplomacy is a type of cultural diplomacy, which itself is a subset of public diplomacy. Its basic premise is that "the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach". Official government-sponsored culinary diplomacy programs have been established in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Lebanon, Peru, Israel, the United States, Cambodia, Japan, and Nordic countries.
The Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival is a food and drink festival that takes place each spring in Disney California Adventure in the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. The festival includes a number of themed kiosks, each featuring food and beverages from a particular aspect of California cuisine. Other offerings include wine and beer tastings, seminars, and cooking demonstrations. This event was inspired by the similar but much larger Epcot International Food & Wine Festival.
Tourism impacts tourist destinations in both positive and negative ways, encompassing economic, political, socio-cultural, environmental, and psychological dimensions.
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