Place promotion through food and tourism: Rural branding and the role of websites

This paper examines the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) in promoting food tourism initiatives in rural areas as the building blocks for the branding of those areas. It argues that rural regions tend to be less place-specific than towns or cities, often being sparsely populated, with dispersed activities, diverse landscapes and varying perceptions held of ‘the rural’. But rural regions are, of course, usually closely associated with agriculture and food, and given that gastronomy is a growth area in tourism, it would appear to make sense to promote appropriate rural regions' identities through food- and drink-related images. But brand development is contingent upon a number of prerequisites that, in combination, may be elusive. This paper examines the employment of the intersection of food and tourism as the foundation for establishing a rural brand, and the use of websites in promoting such identity. It highlights inadequacies in the web-based promotion of food-related tourism initiatives in the UK, due in part to the fragmented infrastructure for regional tourism development and promotion in the UK. Practical recommendations are made regarding design factors for the provision of web-based tourism information.