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According to the report of Reputación Online de Turismo Gastronómico en España, Vigo occupies the third place in the ranking of cities with the highest number of online gastronomic recommendations.

The new edition of the Online Reputation Monitor of Gastronomic Tourism in Spain by Vivential Value, a company specializing in innovation in tourism intelligence, has analyzed the different stages of the cycle of the gastronomic tourist, so that you can evaluate the presence of gastronomy at different times of the traveler, from inspiration and marketing, to the visit to the destination and its gastronomic resources or, finally, the possible active recommendation to other potential tourists.

The report, which highlights the importance of betting on gastronomic tourism as a fundamental axis to achieve a more diversified tourism model, with more spending on the destination, less seasonality and, ultimately, more sustainable economic, cultural and environmental has evaluated a total of 131 national destinations, both urban and coastal, which received 1.7 million recommendations from tourists mentioning gastronomy as one of the outstanding resources of their visit, while culture received twice as many mentions.

Logroño, Jerez de la Frontera and Vigo are confirmed as the most gastronomic destinations according to the recommendations of tourists who visited them as travelers made recommendations of their cuisine in relation to the total recommendations of 41%, 29% and 28%, respectively. Other destinations of marked gastronomic positioning in the popular ideology, see their level of gastronomic recommendation more diluted to have to share prominence with the prominent presence of its culture or beaches, such as Barcelona or Donostia-San Sebastian.

Satisfaction and marketing
The Vivential Value report also highlights that domestic tourists are more critical than international tourists in relation to their experience in our restaurants, wineries, etc., so the report stresses that the sector must strive to attract local customers and proximity, which being a majority and priority for many destinations and establishments will allow you to move forward in the deseasonalization.

As for the marketing of products linked to gastronomic tourism, the report highlights that the presence of gastronomic experiences in the main online booking agencies is still very discreet, with only 15% of the total sample of almost 10,000 activities published. This fact contrasts negatively with the growing trend of tourists who want to experience destinations in a more local and identitarian key, where gastronomy must play a determining role and, therefore, must strengthen its visibility on such platforms.

Scope of enotourism promotion
General social networks continue to occupy a large part of the broadcasting of messages made by destinations and gastronomic products, such as enotourism, where a sample of 50 profiles of enogastronomic routes and D.O. reached more than 180,000 content in 2018 on Twitter, although they are very concentrated in a few territories and within a context already known, of little organic reach of these networks on their potential audiences.
At the same time, the volume of new reviews on wineries grew 40% in the last year, almost double that of restaurants, demonstrating the growing attractiveness of this product, which also gains notoriety thanks to the experiences of previous customers that are shared on tourism platforms.
As Rafael González, director of the company promoting the study, points out, “gastronomy can and should be claimed as one of the protagonists of the tourist experience in most of our destinations, which forces us to review in detail what the digital story of this gastronomic proposal is, reinforcing for this purpose the current tourist intelligence systems of the destinations”.