Culinary Tourism is hot! Food is an attraction - just like a museum, and food and drink are the most overlooked components of the visitor experience. Every traveller eats and drinks, and consequently, the ubiquity of that behavior is something that travel industry marketers usually overlook, largely because we all take eating for granted. Culinary Tourism is an important new industry that weds two related but distant hospitality cousins — foodservice and tourism. Hospitality businesses have an underexplored opportunity to make a significant impression on visitors with unique and memorable dining experiences. Attend this session to find out what to do to get your slice of the pie!

Food and travel are hot topics in today's media world, and the marketplace for culinary tourism stories is getting more competitive. Learn how to build buzz for your culinary tourism-related business and put your efforts in front of the world. Virginia M. Sheridan, President of M. Silver Associates, one of the highest ranking mid-sized public relations firms in the United States, will share tips and techniques for stretching your public relations efforts farther.

Virginia M. Sheridan, M. Silver Associates

You have interesting culinary products but what is the best way to market them? How do you increase your share of local, regional or national visitors? Can food and drink be sold through e-mail and on the Web? What role does a media relations campaign play in marketing Culinary Tourism? Attend this session and learn how to create a unique competitive advantage for your business with proper culinary tourism product development.

Learning Objectives:

• How to market food and travel together.
• Assessing competition and creating a competitive advantage in your marketing strategy.
• Creating a unique selling proposition (USP).
• Data collection and privacy.
• Using research to define realistic target markets.
• Creating a successful multi-tiered marketing campaign.
• Brochure design.
• Media relations (print, radio, television, cable).
• E-mail marketing.
• Successful website design.
• Funding Culinary Tourism marketing campaigns.
• Cooperative marketing and how to get a greater return on your investment.

Hear how two entities turned an agriculture venture into a profitable culinary tourism attraction while still maintaining their 'farm' status - and what the regional DMO's are doing to promote them!

Adams Farm is a sixth-generation working farm in southern Vermont, offering the public seasonal activities and interactive agricultural experiences for the entire family, as well as a complete Farm Store and Quilt & Fiber Arts Loft.

Each Sunday July thru October, Chamard Vineyards invites local farmers and artisans to the vineyard to offer guests home grown, locally raised and hand made products. As Jonathan Rapp and Drew McLachlan, chefs for Dinners at the Farm say, "without farms there's no farmers and without farmers there's no great food or wine!"

Stu Nunnery, Director, Rhode Island Center for Agriculture Promotion & Education (Moderator)
Jill Adams Mancivalano, Adams Farms
Bridget Riordan, Chamard Vineyards

Creating a local dining experience requires local ingredients, which of course means locally raised, grown and farmed products. Purchasing local food stuffs ensures the freshest ingredients for the patrons as well as provides a marketing platform for culinary tourism. Just as importantly, however, is that is supports local farms, creating a positive economic cycle that can make a difference between saving a farm or losing the land to development. Learn about the crucial role restaurants and foodservice have in perpetuating agriculture for the future, and how your business can make money while “doing the right thing”.

As Marketing Director and Senior Analyst of Edge Research, no one is better qualifed to give insights and revelations from the recent Culinary Tourism study. With that information we will have a better insight to the immediate future of the travel industry. With the economic turndown that the US is currently experiencing, the weakening of the US dollar abroad, and plus being a Presidential election year, just what does this mean for tourism, and culinary tourism to be more exact? Ms. McCulloch will share findings of the recent Culinary Tourism Survey of which was co-sponsored by ICTA and give us a glimpse of what the 'Tourism Crystal Ball' holds in store for us all.

Each year, organizations plan and produce seasonal restaurant promotions. Some work, many don't. Tour operators are always trying to find that restaurant that will 'go the extra mile' to provide great food, exemplary service and parking for the motor coaches to their groups....why are these restaurants so difficult to find? A tour operator that conducts Culinary Tours to Italy, a guide that conducts Culinary tours in Boston, and an Executive from a City marketing organization share their expertise so that your next 'partnering with the restaurant(s) next door' will be a huge success!

It does not matter what city or community one lives in or is a guest of, there is always an ethnic restaurant/community to explore. Question is, how does one develop a relationship with these entities and partner to benefit all in the culinary tourism industry? Meet Michele, who built her tour business around Boston's Littly Italy and Chinatown, Walter known far and wide for his Jewish-Italian restaurant, gift shop and school, and Scott who worked so diligently for the Town Green Special Services District, an organization that covers a 27 square block area in Downtown New Haven. Discover the common thread that binds these 3 hard-working and committed individuals together.