How can tourists be educated through experiences that allow them to share aspects of the local life without excessively disturbing nature and local communities? How do you avoid forms of disneyfication that may turn locals into extras?
On March 24 and 25th, the 5the International Conference on Culinary Tourism took place in Pamplona, Navarra, a region of Spain that is not far from the Pyrenees mountains and the border with France. Full disclosure: I was invited as the keynote speaker and moderator in a panel about the role of design in sustainable culinary tourism. Pamplona in winter is not your obvious tourist destination; nevertheless Navarra is trying to expand its tourism appeal leveraging its food traditions. In the city of Pamplona, ir de pintxos (going for tapas), is an activity that is tightly connected with local social life, regardless of the weather. Try to go out on a Friday night or on an early Saturday afternoon before lunch, at the time of aperitif, and you will see it for yourself. The nearby areas are rich in products that with a few exceptions, such as the pimientos del Piquillo, have not reached international (and at times national) fame.
Maybe because of that, Navarra can claim a rugged but honest authenticity in ways that other regions of the country cannot, especially if they are overrun by tourists year round and much of the food offering is tailored to meet their needs. Not so many places here seem to have embraced the Global Brooklyn aesthetics; even the renovated and more modern establishments remain relatively untouched by the trappings of cosmopolitan foodism. All in all, quite refreshing…
This year, the conference on culinary tourism had sustainability as its theme. Three panels focused each on a different aspect of sustainability: economic, environmental, and socio-cultural. Professionals, experts, and academics from the area, from all over Spain, and from abroad shared experiences and reflected on challenges and possibilities.
The economic viability of culinary tourism initiatives was an obvious concern for the participants. After all, all stakeholders involved need to make a decent living out of it.
The inevitable tension between the rhythms and necessities of food production and the pressure to entertain tourist was addressed: when we pick our own berries in a farm or taste crops directly on the fields we encroach on activities and structures that are meant to meet other priorities. The producers with more means often build separate spaces for tourists, like tasting rooms or dedicated plots, so that visitors do not interrupt or disturb the daily goings-on. Of course, such solutions risk to affect the tourists’ sense of participation in something authentic, which can be nevertheless tempered by providing unique, very localized experiences that strive for a clear differentiation from similar undertakings elsewhere. Providers also constantly offset the swings in visitors’ numbers caused by seasonality: tourists tend to come in packed –at times unsustainable – crowds during the warm months, which also happen to be the time of the year when most productive activities take place. This constitutes an issue not only in terms of economic viability, but also of impact on the survival of local communities.
Producers and other providers of tourist initiatives struggle to find a good balance between fun and entertainment on the one hand, and on the other the visitors’ interest in education and knowledge, which growing segments of their costumers appreciate. Storytelling turns into a crucial strategy to add value to what is essentially a business. Of course, high quality experiences and products need to be sold at higher prices to be profitable, which can cause accusations of elitism. Can a truly sustainable experience ever be affordable for large audiences?
At any rates, crowds are never good from the environmental sustainability point of view: the will to create tourism experiences with a small carbon footprint or even carbon off-setting, clashes with the requisite of adequate numbers of visitors to run a viable business. It is not easy to find solutions that mediate between the tourists’ desire of consuming (which exhausts resources) and the attempts to respect the environment and maintain renewable resources.
Promoting and supporting unfashionable and relatively unknown cuisines and products, which may even been previously considered as uninteresting, constitute an effective strategy in this sense. However, how can producers make tourists understand the importance of agrobiodiversity? How can traditional but unfamiliar foods be reintroduced to visitors? The expression comer paysage, to eat a landscape, expressed many producers’ intention to promote artisanal practices and traditional, high-quality low-yield crops.
Educating consumers, and in particular children, emerged as a concern and a priority for many of the participants in the conference. However, educating without boring is not easy. This is one of the challenges that the fourth panel, dedicated to design and its potential to support culinary tourism, addressed. Playfulness and learning are not mutually exclusive, but it is necessary to design effective services, experiences, and locations, from tasting rooms to museums.
Moreover, how can tourists be educated through experiences that allow them to share aspects of the local life without excessively disturbing nature and local communities? How do you avoid forms of disneyfication that may turn locals into extras? The positive windfall of food-related tourism activities on local communities in terms of rural development, economic diversification, and job creation is hard to deny. This is another aspect in which design can intervene, avoiding that tourists’ participation in local or traditional practices turns them in empty spectacles that can even damage the socio-cultural life of a community.
This can be a major challenge in conservative communities that do not particularly trust strangers. Decisions cannot be simply imposed top-down: opportunities for bottom- up, grass-root initiatives needs to be maintained. Codesign and participative design focusing on the priorities, values, and needs of local communities can increase their willingness to participate in strategic projects, when based on common interests and values.
The conversation on design and sustainable tourism addressed some of these challenges. How can product design, interior design, architecture, and other forms of design focusing on experience, service, systems, contribute to the various aspects of sustainability? How can design support and improve circular economy approaches in sustainable tourism? What can the role of design be in identifying, supporting, and promoting culinary heritage and traditional practices as a resource for sustainable tourism? How can design increase the participation of local communities and stakeholders in sustainable projects of culinary tourism?
Answering these question is an extremely tall order and easy recipes do not exist. However, it is important that communities like Navarra take these issues seriously, as the Manifesto for the Sustainable Gastronomy of Navarra, launched during the conference, indicates.