Gastronomy Tourism: A New Developing Orientation of Ho Chi Minh City Tourism

Recently, the tourism industry contributes positively to national economies. With the tourism market becoming increasingly competitive, the policies, products and strategies related to tourism are the focus of research and training knowledge about tourism is promoted among countries, territories, and our region. Recognizing this, each country concentrates on building destination branding, presenting specific tourism products to create a distinct impression compared to other countries. Thus, the national tourism department explores and innovates constantly to strengthen destination appeal to tourists to entice arrivals and return visit. Furthermore, tourist demand seem to change endlessly, and shows tendencies increasingly inclined towards comprehensive destination experiences that typically include landscapes, cultural heritage, nature, and local foods. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) report in 2017, gastronomy is ranked third among the main reasons for choosing tourist to visit a destination, after cultural motive and nature. Gastronomy is a modern tourism sfrategy in the contemporary world tourism industry. Gastronomy tourism demonstrates food-related tourism, develops a sense of national pride as an intangible heritage through a country s cuisines as every dish can tell a story about a cultural destination; they are markers to show a destination positively on the world map. Gastronomy tourism becomes a trend, a study, a tourism sfrategy of famous cuisine in developed parts of the world such as France, Turkey, Spain, Belgium, United Kingdom, America, Canada, and representative Asian regions as Japan, Korean, Thailand. In Viet Nam, there are as yet no agreed definition s of what food tourism, culinary tourism or cuisine tourism may be, and as yet the latest tourism tendency is not confirmed as permanent of simply flavor of the month, however gastronomy tourism by definition carries the flavor of Vietnam tourism in general. Consequently, with few research articles relating to Vietnamese Gastronomy, the Vietnam Gastronomy Tourism 2018 event was held at Ho Chi Minh City as a way to promote Gastronomy more widely across Viet Nam. In addition, because it is in Ho Chi Minh City that we most readily see the convergence and abundance of cuisines from the diverse cultural spread of Viet Nam, the full potentials to promote gastronomic products could only best be realized centrally. This article seeks a definition of gastronomical tourism and explores, the potential of cultural analysis to create, develop and access gastronomy tourism products within Ho Chi Minh City. This then function as a destination branding, promoting local food resources, as well as suitable marketing strategies and sustainable gastronomy tourism via successful gastronomy tourism products in many parts of the world.