Gastronomic Tourism as a Resource for Managing the Hospitality of the North Caucasus Territory

The study is devoted to identifying the resource potential of gastronomic tourism as a tool for managing the hospitality of the North Caucasus territory and promoting tourist destinations in the region. The objectives of the study were to consider the phenomenon of gastronomic tourism in terms of the territory geocultural branding. The article presents a systematic analysis of scientific research devoted to the problem of gastronomic tourism as a resource for managing the hospitality of the territory. The structural-system approach, functional analysis, activity approach and other methods are the methodological basis of the research. Scientific novelty is determined by identifying the specifics of gastronomic tourism in the North Caucasus. It is determined that according to the type of the tourist destination, gastronomic tours can be both a rural tour and a city tour; according to the target setting, it can be a cultural, educational, health-related tour, ecotours, etc. In practice, in the North Caucasian Federal District, combined tours that combine all the above-mentioned features are often offered. A gastronomic monotour is defined by the authors of the study as a special type of tours associated with visiting production (or cultivation) facilities and tasting one type of product (wine, beer, cheese, melons and gourds, etc.). The analysis of practices demonstrating effective event marketing in the field of gastronomic tourism in the North Caucasus is of practical value. The authors of the study come to the conclusion that a common communicative failure in the field of Russian culinary tourism is the practice of highlighting only one or several national dishes of a particular cuisine, while the fact that a unique characteristic of Russian culinary identity is, first of all, the variety of cuisines of the peoples inhabiting the country territory is not taken into account. In the conclusion of the article, the criteria of efficiency and prospects for the development of gastronomic tourism as a tool for managing the hospitality of the North Caucasus territory are determined.