Tasting Tourism: a New Phase Towards Experiencing Indian Cuisine After the Pandemic

Abstract

Since the evolution of mankind, the need for food and drink has been a major concern for humans. It has been reported from the ancient records that human had to cultivate and the store food for consumption but as time passed humans started to travel from one place to another in search of food and drink which further in the modern era gave rise to the tourism sector where people travel for one place to another to explore new culture and experience the local cuisine which depicts about the place and its community living around the region. Due to this, there was a tremendous increase in the percentage of tourists every year in different continents where they only travel for leisure and availing the local cuisine that included both food and the local beverage of the location. Therefore, the essence of food is also a vital part of the lifestyle for every individual and tourists who travel to the destination and try to experience the local cuisine. If you see the world, most of the tourists are eagerly mad at traveling to India, wherein every 100 meters you will get a varied cuisine influence which fascinates the international tourists towards the country's culinary inheritance. Therefore, the role of promotion and marketing of the regional cuisine of a country as it showcases the cultural identity of the nation's heritage. Henceforth, the paper explores the framework of the tasting tourism as to create a new phase of tourism after the Covid-19 in order to increase the tourism sector by introducing a new segment where the cuisine will showcase the opportunity for providing an extensive knowledge for the regional cuisine and beverages available, where they can experience during their travel to the region. But due to the pandemic situation, it has been seen that the Indian tourism sector had a drastic change as the inflow of foreign tourists decreased, and also the food business sector is facing downfall due to the rapid spread of the virus.  Key words: Gastronomy; Tasting Tourism; Indian cuisine; Marketing; Promotion; Tourists.