How do you create your own Culinary Tourism Destination?

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1 ICSC Certified Professionals Newsletter February 2009 Culinary Tourism By: Carolyn J. Feimster, SCMD President CJF MARKETING INTERNATIONAL 2227 U.S. Highway One #274 North Brunswick, NJ Phone: I n these tough economic times, don t think that it is just about shopping in your center, but rather it is all about the experience of shopping. And, that includes the experience of dining as well. Culinary Tourism is an important niche travel segment and the shopping center industry can capitalize on it. Sometimes the obvious is not so clear in our business. Although the shopping center industry for years has grown to better understand the importance of food courts, restaurants and cafes in our centers to extend the length of visit, it is only recently that we have realized how powerful a tool the food component can be for our Visitor Marketing Programs. Most tourists will dine three times a day and our goal is to entice them to eat in our shopping centers. And now there are plenty of tools out there to help you better understand this industry because it truly is more than just eating out. There is an entire travel niche that travels just for culinary purposes and we have the opportunity, if properly packaged, to offer unique shopping and dining experiences to this growing group of foodies. What is Culinary Tourism? According to the International Culinary Tourism Association, (ICTA) Culinary Tourism is defined in the broadest sense as the pursuit of unique and memorable culinary experiences of all kinds, often while traveling, but one can also be a culinary tourist at home. While many people will think of Culinary Tourism as 5-star restaurant experiences or a day of wine tasting, it truly has evolved into so much more, explains Erik Wolf, Founder and President of ICTA. It is not just for gourmet-oriented folks, but really more for those looking for a unique and memorable food experience. That could include a favorite local pastry chef, a sidewalk vendor in NYC or an interesting bar experience, Wolf went on to explain. Of course, there are plenty of subsets of Culinary Tourism such as Gourmet Tourism, Wine Tourism and Spa Cuisine. And now, savvy shopping center marketing professionals are capitalizing on this trend and developing Shop/Dine Programs for the foodies traveling to their destination. Culinary Tourism has a very short history, but certainly has exploded these last couple of years! Prior to 2001, academics around the world had been researching culinary and wine tourism. However, that body of research rarely found its way into the business world. In fact, the term "Culinary Tourism" was not even coined until 1998.

2 In our Visitor Marketing Programs we talk about making the shopping and dining an experience for this market. How is dining an experience? Kathy Anderson, President of AZTM in Phoenix, AZ and Tourism Manager of General Growth Properties, Inc. (GGP) America s Premier Shopping Places tourism brand, explains, Culinary Tourism is experiential and interactive because it truly covers the five senses: you see the colorful food, you smell the spices and aromas, you feel the textures and temperatures, you hear the steaks sizzling and you taste the flavors. Still not convinced? Research indicates that Culinary Tourism is in its infancy stage, about where ecotourism was 20 years ago and adventure tourism was 10 years ago. So it is a new niche worth capitalizing on to drive more visitors to your center. While we take eating for granted, it has tremendous potential to make a long lasting impression. Just think about your last fabulous dining experience. How many people did you tell about it? Even with hotels that have mini bars, coffee pots and kitchenettes, nearly 100% of the tourists do dine out while traveling. Cuisine is the only attraction that is available year-round and is not hindered by weather. Dining is consistently in the top three favorite activities of the tourist market and it certainly is not exclusive to any particular age, sex or Buddakan at The Pier Shops at Caesars in Atlantic City, NJ treats culinary travelers to Asian cuisine set in an ancient Chinese village. ethnic group. The higher the dining bill, the most likely the patrons are tourists. And finally, Culinary Tourism is a tool for economic and community development. So who is capitalizing on this trend? Destinations are. Just take a look at the number of destination web sites that feature food. In fact, Google Food Destinations websites and you will find over 2,000,000 from which to select. Go to most any destination or CVB web site, and you will find a section on dining some more extensive than others such as New Orleans. Besides a listing of their restaurants, they offer an entire section on their food events. Hotels market to the Culinary Tourist by packaging their own food experiences with the hotel stay. So do the cruise lines, travel magazines with features on food and, of course, shopping centers! How do you create your own Culinary Tourism Destination? Everything begins with education and an extremely valuable tool is the ICTA web site. Wolf gives excellent examples of programs and provides a great deal of good information. Travelers today seek bragging rights, the ability to experience the unique and memorable and will go home and talk about it. And we all know the power of word-of-mouth advertising! explains Wolf. I recently met colleagues who took me to (an un-named national chain restaurant) and I went kicking and screaming, laughed Wolf. I told him how I could relate because of a similar experience I had years ago in Buenos Aires when the locals thought I wanted an American dining experience. Nothing could be further from the truth! However, so many of our shopping centers have these national chains. True, but as we will see later, you can dig deeper to offer a Culinary Experience at just about any type of center. Second, developers are better at understanding the desire for local cuisine served by a local restaurant or café. To be fair, the larger the pie, the bigger everyone s slice, so travelers will spend money both in chains as well

3 as local and independent dining establishments. Yet it is these local hang-outs that lure visitors in the first place. The more people traveling to a destination, the more the chains will benefit as well. But if we don t support the local and independent dining establishments, in 20 years, there will be none left and consumers won t have many dining choices. Next, educate your restaurants, cafes and food outlets. Anderson offers several suggestions such as holding category meetings to explore opportunities; tourism training on what the visitor is seeking, offering assistance in product development and meeting with your CVB to further define opportunities with your destination. In our world of tourism, product development means assisting the restaurants in promoting their group dining opportunities to our tour operators, encouraging them to offer pre-fixed menus for groups, offering food demonstrations and celebrity chef appearances, explains Anderson. The ICTA offers a series of corporate training programs to help shopping center management get the most out of culinary tourism. Defining opportunities with your destination can really be an eye-opener. For example, California s Santa Barbara County offers an extensive program through their CVB and Film Commission called Capturing the Foodies: A Recipe for Marketing Success. This launched several years ago as they recognized how people travel to enjoy food and drink. Their culinary attractions include food festivals and events, cooking schools, farmers and fishermen s markets, agricultural tours, food shops, wine and beer tastings, and of course, restaurant dining. Their findings by Lang Research found that culinary tourists are most likely to be affluent, mature couples or affluent, young singles. Furthermore, segments most likely to be interested in culinary tourism represent 27.3% of the U.S. adult population. This comprehensive campaign included the development of a culinary guide, web site, PR and advertising campaigns, trade show and convention participation and promotions. Examples of How Shopping Centers have Created Programs to Capitalize on this Market: So how can we in our industry capitalize on this growing trend? Let s take a look at how centers around the country have developed successful programs. Our first culinary experience begins in the South, in Northwest Florida. Intrawest is a world renowned developer of resorts and manages the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in Sandestin, FL. Part of the Sandestin experience includes two shopping venues, the Village at Baytowne Wharf and The Market Shops. The Marketing Departments of both understand the strength of marketing to the culinary traveler and both venues offer an extensive array of food festivals throughout the year. To further understand the Village, it is a collection of 50+ merchants, the majority local with about half in the food category. The initial leasing efforts were directed toward finding the best of the best operator in each food category; therefore, it is a culinary experience in itself. The Market Shops, a more traditional specialty center, offers more retail than food but still capitalizes on this market with some unique food and wine festivals, one of which I had the pleasure of experiencing myself when the Beaujolais Nouveau wines were introduced last Fall.

4 Back in the Village, they recently held their Annual Wine Festival. The annual Sandestin Wine Festival is one of the leading wine events that has set that area apart as a wine country all its own. Sandestin transformed itself into the South of France with the four-day event designed to showcase the best wines in the world through a series of tastings of more than 600 fine wines. Each year, thousands of wine enthusiasts flock to the event and this year s event was no exception. And, of course, with all these guests at The Village, merchants benefit tremendously because most people will eat a meal after tasting wines as well as do some shopping. Nothing like a bit of wine to open up the pocketbook! How did the Resort get such a fine collection of eateries? Director of Commercial Property Leasing, Kim Duke- Layden says, To truly offer a culinary experience in a destination, it is not enough to just offer the Patrons at Lumpy s Wine Bar and Bottle Shop with Lumpy and her owners Beaujolais Nouveau wines introduced at the Market Shops, Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort. variety. Rather, we make the effort to find the best operator possible in each of the selected categories. Since they are often from outside our market area, we invite them to see what a wonderful area they have an opportunity to open a business in. Of course being able to cater to both an upscale local population as well as to the masses of visitors is usually enough to seal the deal! Leasing goes beyond just finding the best operators in each category but also seeks out unique type of tenants as well. A great example is the Beyond the Grape store at The Market Shops. This boutique sells wines from a variety of Florida-grown fruits. This makes the perfect gift item! Additionally, The Market Shops store, Kitchenique, offers cooking classes that are special private cooking events for groups that include local, celebrity and touring chefs. For those wine enthusiasts, Lumpy s Wine Bar and Bottle Shop just opened at The Village. Why the name? What family-owned business would not name their store after their favorite pet, in this case it is their beloved dachshund! For more information check out:

5 Another shopping center that made a concerted effort to focus their leasing to be able to offer a Culinary Experience is the new The Pier Shops at Caesars in Atlantic City, NJ. Marketing and Sponsorship Director, Vicki Weiss, explains, Our focus is on a strong upscale fashion brand as well as an exceptional dining experience so we developed the positioning statement, Taste Fashion which works well to truly deliver the message of who we are. Their restaurants are strategically placed on the third level of the Pier and many offer a beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean. The leasing team found concepts from the East Coast s most popular restaurateurs from Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Each offers a diverse menu and innovative décor, creating an international restaurant row set atop (literally) the Atlantic Ocean. Future tourism marketing plans calls for further capitalizing on this culinary experience by packaging the dining experience for the visitor and coordinating dining promotions, said Weiss. Farmers markets are offered several days during the week. The Continental recreates the Vegas Strip a al Rat Pack experience for visitors to the Atlantic City, NJ restaurant Another result from the desire for culinary experiences, including fresh farm-grown foods, is the rampant explosion of farmer s markets. According to research from 2006, the number of farmer s markets in the U.S. has more than doubled to over 3,700. Once upon a time, they were only available out in the country until city dwellers wanted the foods available closer to home. Municipalities all over the country started to include farmer s markets in their overall economic development plan. Next came the shopping centers. Many, such as The Market Shops at Sandestin, offer a farmer s market several days during the week. We feel that this is just another way to connect with our local community by offering them products fresh from the farmers gardens, explained Rebecca Job, Director of Commercial Property Operations. South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan is developing a farmer s market to retrofit the over 100 year old former Fulton Fish Market. The space was vacated about a year ago leaving a number of stalls that is the perfect match for a market. Especially with the tremendous growth lower Manhattan is experiencing in the residential sector, we feel this will be a wonderful service to be able to offer fresh produce, dairy, meats as well as prepared foods that our residents can take home for dinner, explained Lincoln Palsgrove IV, Sr. Marketing Manager GGP. Turning to the more traditional shopping center environment, think about how you can collaborate and leverage your offerings with other centers in your market. Two GGP properties in Las Vegas, Fashion Show and The Grand Canal Shoppes, have partnered to produce a

6 Dining Guide. Our Guide encourages customers shopping at one of our properties to visit the other, explained Danielle Long, Marketing Manager of The Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian and The Shoppes at The Palazzo. She went on to explain that local concierge at key hotels along the Strip use the Guide as a dining reference for their hotel guests. Her partner in this project, James McMichael, CMD, Sr. Marketing Manager for Fashion Show, includes the Guide when someone purchases one of his Shop, Dine & Stay Packages. We have partnered with several local Marriott branded hotels that have limited or no food offering. It is a terrific partnership because it offers their guests a large array of dining choices and we benefit from the packages they sell, said McMichael. Marketplaces are a wonderful venue for culinary experiences and the media realizes that. The Food Network contacted Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston to film an Interstitial - a short feature that plays in between two shows, but is not a paid commercial or a documentary. Sponsored by Goya, customers were selected to compete in a clam bake with Salty Dog, a merchant at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, donating the seafood. This gave us an opportunity to host a unique special event on our property which allowed us to interact with our customers. The only requirement the Food Network had when selecting one of our customers to participate was that they have a passion for cooking, said Phillips Seafood brings guests a classic American seafood menu boasting an array of fresh seasonal fish and Phillips' famous jumbo lump crab cakes. Geraldine (Geri) Brown General Manager & Market Strategy. She went on to explain that they frequently will do taste samplings with her merchants as a part of the culinary experience at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. After all, approximately 50% of our mix is food, so it behooves us to actively promote it, added Brown. Both Faneuil Hall Marketplace and South Street Seaport actively promote and sell food court dining vouchers. This is an excellent tool for the group and student markets because they are pre-paid. Visitors get a choice of dining options and the tour operator or group leader who buys them makes a commission from them, said Palsgrove. In addition, South Street Seaport has implemented an incentive program to further stimulate sales. Every quarter, the company that purchases the most number of vouchers receives 15 complimentary vouchers and the company that purchases the second highest amount receives 10 complimentary vouchers. Now that you have some programs in place, how about promoting it? One easy way is through a program developed by ICTA President Wolf called FoodTrekker. When it comes to food, the world is your competition, explained Wolf. Original research commissioned by the International Culinary Tourism Association in 2007 found that culinary travelers perform more pre-arrival research than any other traveler. The survey showed existing culinary travel information to be poor and/or inconsistent and that many travelers do not trust official tourism office websites! The number one reason (80%) for trying a local restaurant is word-of-mouth from local colleagues or hotel staff. Obviously, it is important to work with your area hotels. However, for those doing word-of-mouse research, we have created a revolutionary new portal for the world s culinary travel industry, explained Wolf. The site, called FoodTrekker.com, serves the needs of many different markets: obviously culinary travelers themselves; destinations seeking to promote their culinary offerings; membership groups and associations (such as a B&B guild)

7 looking to promote their members to culinary travelers; independent businesses (such as your local restaurants), and of course, the media. To stay true to its mission to promote unique and memorable culinary experiences what culinary travelers want FoodTrekker s content policy strongly favors local and independent businesses. Culinary travel information presented on a culinary travel website is more targeted and more relevant for your target market than a mere listing of restaurants or food events. Culinary-oriented listings are available at no charge with enhanced listings available for a nominal fee. However, the real benefit comes from the sales leads that are generated from the site, explained Wolf. Next, go to FoodTrekker.com, sign up and get your foodie profile. This is the best way to see how the site works and how it can help your local and independent culinary businesses such as restaurants, wine shops, culinary retail stores, and kitchen gadget stores. In today s economic challenging times, the more we can help our merchants the better for our centers. Carolyn J. Feimster, SCMD is the owner/president of CJF MARKETING INTERNATIONAL, with offices in Hollywood, Florida and North Brunswick, New Jersey. The company s primary focus is on developing results oriented programs to enhance the marketing, tourism development, economic development, customer service and retail productivity of shopping centers, cities, downtown retail districts and other commercial properties and organizations. Projects include developing and implementing Business, Marketing, Economic Development and Tourism Plans; developing re-merchandising programs; providing seminars and training on marketing strategies, customer service and retail tourism programs; coordinating grand openings and the training of marketing directors. Presently Feimster is working with clients in Central Europe, the Middle East and throughout the U.S. Ms. Feimster holds the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) Senior Certified Marketing Director (SCMD) designation, is a year-2000 recipient of the ICSC Trustees Distinguished Service Award, was awarded the Shopping Tourism Person of the Year Award for 2003 from Shop America Alliance, was recently appointed to the Board of Directors (formerly Program Chair) of SKAL International NYC chapter, was appointed to the Advisory Board of the University of Florida Center for Tourism, Research and Development and is an active member in numerous other trade organizations. She has served as an ICSC faculty member of the domestic and international Institutes, the University of Shopping Centers, and has presented overseas seminars including Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Cairo, Egypt; Bangkok, Thailand; Istanbul, Turkey; Kuwait; Taipei, Taiwan; Buenos Aires and Cordoba, Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; and Mexico City and Cancun, Mexico. Ms. Feimster is a graduate of the Univ. of FL with a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism and Communications.