Gastronomy and Tourism in Turkey: The Role of ICTs Aysegul Surenkok a , Rodolfo Baggio a , and Magda Antonioli Corigliano a a Master in Economics and Tourism Bocconi University, Milan, Italy aysegul.surenkok@gmail.com {rodolfo.baggio, magda.antonioli@unibocconi.it} Abstract Food has an undeniable importance for holiday makers. As such, food tourism has gained an enormous potential in recent years. A high percentage of travellers, consider dining and food as relevant activities during their travels. On the other hand, Internet has shown to be a powerful means for promoting a destination and all its resources. Studies on the uses of ICTs and the Internet with regards to tourism, and food tourism in particular, have mainly focused so far on European and Western countries. This exploratory investigation deals with Turkey and how food and wine are represented online and examines the behaviour of website visitors when searching information. The findings indicate a good, yet niche, demand against low levels of supply for gourmet tourism with lack of sufficient understanding of tourism by the governing institutions. The latter finding becomes more evident when considering online offerings. Keywords: Turkey; food and wine tourism; online promotion; cross cultural diversity. 1 Introduction Food has an undeniable importance for life. Increasingly, food is also becoming a central factor driving travellers’ choice with regards to the purpose of their trips. Destinations are no longer competing only in terms of their vast natural resources and cultural heritage, but also in their food offering. Talbot Inn at Knightwick in U.K. serves as an epitome of food related destination marketing and travel since the late 14 th century (Hall et al., 2003). An increasing number of other studies also show that a high percentage of travellers care about what they eat while travelling or make journey decisions by well valuing food. Hall and Sharples (2003) enumerate a number of statistics on business and leisure travellers and their attitude towards food in their travels. For instance, as of 2000, 87% of all US travellers had eaten out at a restaurant. In this process Internet has shown to be able to provide many benefits for both suppliers and customers. Most importantly, it can reduce barriers across countries, making food culture of one country visible to another. Many travel agencies and operators utilise these benefits to effectively market their products online. Most investigations into these issues, up to now, have been directed to European and Western countries showing only limited interest in other areas of the World. This work stems out of a wider investigation on the Turkish travel market and specifically on food tourism in Turkey. Aim of this paper is to complete the analysis ENTER2010 - 17th International Conference on Information Technology and Travel & Tourism February 10-12 Lugano, CH Surenkok, A., Baggio, R. & Antonioli Corigliano, M. (2010) Gastronomy and Tourism in Turkey: The Role of ICTs, In Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism (ed. Ulrike Gretzel, Rob Law and Matthias Fuchs), pp 567-578.