Rural Culinary Tourism in Southern Europe: Emerging Educational Needs of a Growing Sector

Abstract

Rural culinary tourism is a growing sector in European tourism and is a key resource for rural development, in particular in Southern Europe. The boom of the sector that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, however, poses important questions concerning the actual capacity of local actors to grasp this opportunity. The paper investigates the main trends in rural tourism in Southern Europe and the specific educational needs entrepreneurs express based on extensive research conducted in seven Southern European countries (France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey) within the Erasmus + project “The European Network for the Promotion of Culinary and Proximity Tourism in Rural Areas” in 2022. Specifically, the research was conducted through focus group discussions with professionals and stakeholders of the project carried out in the target countries involving 76 respondents. Based on the data collected, this paper indicates a way forward for the new gastronomes to understand this sector and invest their professionality in it.

1. Introduction

Tourism is a key sector of the local economy and includes a vast array of services (e.g., travel, transport, hotels, food) that provides 10% of the European GDP (COM/2020/550 final). In Europe, the sector counts 2.3 million enterprises, mainly small and medium-sized (SMEs), employing around 12.3 million people. In 2018, the sector employed 5.1% of the total active population (corresponding to approximately 11.9 million jobs). The importance of the sector for the continent is also demonstrated by the fact that in 2019, European countries received 1.5 billion tourists, covering about half of the entire market. Since 2020, the COVID-19 crisis has impacted this sector severely, especially in 2020, when the World Tourism Organization estimated a loss of between 50 and 80%. The pandemic severely affected Southern Europe. The results of Bulgaria (−53.1%), Cyprus (−76%), Greece (−55.8%), Italy (−68.5%), and Romania (−60.3%) are significant in this respect [1]. There were specific restrictions in international mobility [2], as well as the impact of the long periods of lockdown [3]. However, this situation represented a fundamental opportunity for the development of local, proximity tourism, specifically for the area that comes under the rubric of rural tourism [4].

Rural tourism is an umbrella concept [5] that covers different types of tourism taking place in rural environments and involving the fruition of environmental and socio-cultural elements of the visited place [6,7]. There are a limited number of parameters that specifically identify this sector on an international level [8,9,10,11]: the location outside an urban area; the presence of small or medium-sized accommodation facilities; the easy access to natural/agricultural environment; the centrality given to local resources in the articulation of the touristic product and offering; and the involvement of local personnel and resources. These features are the main driver for a sector that has grown over time, attracting people from urban areas [12] to visit communities otherwise deeply affected by a growing socio-economic marginalisation [13,14]. For these communities, tourism has represented a fundamental opportunity for economic diversification and growth, promoting the revitalization of minor settlements and improving the quality of life of residents [15]. In the past 20 years, this has expanded and proved to be a crucial area of entrepreneurship able to mitigate the phenomena of rural abandonment [16,17,18]. The opening of new facilities and the relaunch of pre-existing ones has revitalised the economic milieu, improving the standard of living in the area, increasing the income of the population, and boosting the revenues for local authorities [19,20,21,22].

In the face of these positive impacts, rural tourism presents some structural shortcomings. Unlike other touristic sectors, rural tourism relies mostly on the activity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), often family businesses that are run as a second job or side activity of specialised farms or artisan production (some of the most common forms of business in this sector are the ones of small restaurants, agritourism, guest houses, taverns, and didactic farms). In this respect, the sector has to cope with a scarce professionalisation of the entrepreneurs and the personnel as well as the structural socio-economic marginality of the location. This is particularly evident in the most remote areas such as the mountain areas, recently at the centre of new interests of urban tourists [20], where the problems related to communication and mobility as well as the impact of depopulation and ageing are more severe issues [23]. While in order to thrive the sector needs constant innovation and the ability of the economic actors to understand the emergent needs [24], the entrepreneurs show the need for further support to help and guide them in dealing with the changes and the opportunities opened by the COVID-19 pandemic [25]. In this context, scholars have identified six main areas where educational needs are concentrated:

• Collaboration competences, which refers to the competences required to nurture collaboration among the various players of the sector [26,27,28];
• Communication and information technology (IT) competences, which relate to the everyday use of new information technology in the business, for example, the use of social networks and/or the management of a web page, as well as linguistic competences such as the fluent use of English as the international lingua franca [29];
• Entrepreneurial and managerial competences, which refer to the actual administration and management of the firms, as well as the organisation of the activities of the firms. These are widely reported, in particular when firms scale up, moving from an ancillary occupation to the primary business for an individual or a family [30];
• Environmental and cultural competences, which include the use of tools and knowledge concerning environmental and heritage protection [31] as well as green marketing [32,33,34] aimed at avoiding a mismatch between the expectation of the consumers, potentialities of the business, and the services provided [35,36,37];
• Innovation competences, which relate to tools and know-how aimed at analysing the changing market and implementing positive innovation [38,39,40] such as developing new services able to create a deep connection with the local food production [20], the landscape [7], and more, in general, the specificity of the location and the experiences gained there [41];
• Professional competences, which refer to soft and hard skills connected with the organisation and running of hospitality and catering services in the face of the growing needs of tourism [42,43,44].

Despite the identification of these possible areas of intervention, scholars do not provide a comprehensive analysis of the actual educational needs, and priorities are needed to articulate the education initiatives that could reinforce the sector and the actors therein. In this respect, based on empirical research carried out in 2022 in seven South European countries (Cyprus, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy, Romania, and Turkey), this article aims to indicate the educational objectives for which to develop future interventions to support this sector. Thus, the paper answers the following research questions:

• What are the key competences on which an education initiative should focus on?
• What are the objectives of future educational initiatives in support of the rural touristic sector?
• What are the possible forms of intervention future educational initiatives should have?

2. Materials and Methods

The research was conducted between March and October 2022. It involved the conducting of focus group discussions with professionals and stakeholders of the rural touristic sector in the seven countries targeted in the framework of the project Erasmus + project “The European Network for the Promotion of Culinary and Proximity Tourism in Rural Areas”. Figure 1 presents the different phases of the research that moved from a preliminary literary review to the design of the focus group discussion, the completion of the discussions, and the following data analysis.

The research aimed at exploring the educational needs and understanding some key trends of the sector among professionals. In this respect, the discussions involved people working in SMEs in the sector and institutions involved in the promotion of local rural territories, located in geographically isolated places, and interested in promoting proximity and culinary tourism. Specifically, the sample included 76 participants chosen among professionals (e.g., restaurant, hotel and agritourism owners, managers, and chefs) including the participation of stakeholders (e.g., public servants involved in rural and tourism development and members of NGOs involved in rural development). Full details of the participants are reported in Appendix A. The sample includes a minimum number of participants sufficient to carry out exploratory qualitative research aimed at identifying the main emerging trends in the studied field [45].

Each question was discussed for a maximum of 30 min. Each participant expressed her/his point of view on the matter (max. 5 min each) and then discussed the topic with the others. All the discussions were recorded and summarised by the facilitators through a specific report sheet.

The focus groups were carried out with informants operating in specific areas where rural tourism has only recently started developing (Figure 2) [46]. Overall, each region represents an arbitrary location [47] in which rural tourism has developed, and which shows a precise articulation in terms of the political, social, cultural, environmental, and economic issues that shape the location’s specific needs. Overall, the study provides a comprehensive overview of the ongoing trends in the Southern European proximity and culinary tourism industry concerning, on the one hand, the strengths of the sector in terms of the main assets to develop, and on the other, the main challenges faced in terms of the structural needs and the impact of the pandemic.

Overall, the research involved 14 focus group discussions, with each partner organising and conducting 2 focus group discussions under the supervision of the University of Gastronomic Sciences researcher (Figure 2). The discussions were moderated by researchers trained for this purpose according to a shared methodology [48]. All the discussions were conducted between June and September 2022. None of the discussions extended over 2 h, and all were developed around four questions:

(1)

What are the main assets in your area in terms of developing the sector of proximity and culinary tourism?

(2)

What are the biggest needs to be met and the most urgent initiatives required in order to develop proximity and culinary tourism in your area?

(3)

Have the last two years of the pandemic emergency created major problems or have they also been an opportunity for innovation in the tourism sector?

(4)

What are the best ways to create synergies between tourism operators, institutions, the local population, and tourists?

The data collected from the discussion were coded using a specific digital tool: NVIVO 12 plus© [49]. Following Kamberelis, Dimitriadis, and Welker [45], preliminary word maps were generated indicating all the areas of educational intervention perceived as urgent by the informants. These were clustered according to the six areas of interventions emerging from the literature (see introduction). The word maps were then further developed by ranking the individual topics considering their occurrence in the focus groups and in different territories. In this respect, the ranking considers the perceived urgency of specific topics within the same country/territory and among all the participants of the study [49]. On the basis of this analysis, the hierarchy of needs was elaborated. The ranking is represented through a five-star frequency index [50] which reflects the relevance of the topic from a minimum of one star (topic mentioned only occasionally in a specific discussion) to a maximum of five stars (topic mentioned in all the discussions). For each topic, it was kept trace of the actual reference to the respondents who supported the issues.

The personal data of the informants were anonymized.

3. Results

The analysis of the base of knowledge constituted by the integration of all the data collected during the 14 focus group discussions without distinction of country or region, offers an overview of aspired goals that the informants considered crucial to prioritise and achieve in order to reinforce the sector.

Table 1. The key aspired educational goals to prioritise in support of an educational initiative. Frequency is indicated with a 5 stars (☆) system: 1☆ a goal is only sporadically indicated; 5☆ a goal is always mentioned.

Goal	Description	Frequency
Collaboration and Cooperation	Need for a better and improved collaboration among all the economic actors, public institutions and the population of the rural areas.	☆☆☆☆
Create Events	Creating events such as fairs, events, and exhibitions in order to promote a specific area and its products, achieving in this way a greater visibility while attracting tourists.	☆☆
Need of Professional and Managerial Training	Need of professional training for the operators in restaurants, hotels and all kinds of touristic places about IT, marketing, English language, hospitality, and knowing more about local foods and traditions. On the other side, improving all managerial and marketing skills of entrepreneurs as well as the working conditions for employees.	☆☆
Advertising and Promotion (Places and Products)	The need of advertising and promoting rural tourism on a national and international level, alongside the local products and the typical dishes.	☆☆
Improvement of Gastronomic Aspects	Improve gastronomical aspects such as education about local food, typical production method and quality at all levels (from schools to tourists), creation of new typical dishes with local resources, improvements on the use of local resources, and support of local producers.	☆
Improvement of Logistics	Improve the logistics of the areas in terms of public transportation, roads, parking lots, and infrastructures, in general.	☆
Innovation	Improve managerial and marketing skills of entrepreneurs as well as the working conditions for employees.	☆

summarises the results.

Data collected highlighted the necessity of reinforcing the collaboration among enterprises and the institutional stakeholders, as well as the need to support the organisation of new local initiatives (such as events, fairs and exhibitions) able to involve all the different actors of a territory and provide a possibility to exchange competences and know-how among professionals. In this respect, the research provides a comprehensive analysis concerning the different competences to strengthen.

The research highlights trends that have been already partially pointed out in the current debate in tourism studies, as is the case of the importance given to collaboration between the various players in the sector in order to promote the sustainable development of rural tourism [26,27,28]. Results from the focus groups confirm this trend, suggesting the urgent need to improve the frequency and intensity of collaboration among all the economic actors of the sector and with public and private institutions. In fact, collaboration is seen as the best way for creating synergies, an understanding shared by over two-thirds of the participants. This goal could be achieved through the creation of networks to facilitate the exchange of goods, information, and knowledge, as well as through the design and coordination of common advertisement campaigns, the development of shared projects, and the improvement of the sector’s legislation. In this respect, the need for and goal of cooperation entail better communication. From the focus groups, this need emerged in terms of advertising and promotion on the national and international levels through both digital and traditional tools. This is shared by almost half of the respondents. The need for communication is linked with the opportunity to develop new attractive events. Fairs, exhibitions, and workshops have the power to promote specific areas and their products, thus achieving greater visibility while attracting tourists. To achieve good results, however, events should rely on a solid collaboration between all the stakeholders, from entrepreneurs to public institutions and civil society [51].

According to Sin et al. [22], rural entrepreneurship is one of the key activities to favour the local labour market, as it involves not only the agricultural sector but the whole community. Touristic activities need efficiency in their operation and management to avoid environmental damage, degradation, the commodification of the local culture, or destruction of the characteristics of the tourist product; therefore, an efficient activity integrates harmoniously with the environment in which it is inserted, preserving the local culture, protecting, and developing the location [31]. Among the most frequent topics that emerged during the focus groups were the following: the creation of better synergies among all the stakeholders and tourists, the need for professional training directed to hospitality employees to improve their competences in catering facilities and hotels, managerial training for owners and managers in furtherance of economic and personnel management, and the digitalization of the sector. One-third of the participants believed that training for workers at all levels is an urgent need, and three-quarters of the respondents shared the conviction that further training can also help in creating better synergies among stakeholders. Together with professionalisation comes the need to improve the gastronomic aspect of the tourist offer. While two-thirds of the informants believed gastronomic heritage is a crucial asset for the business, a recurrent topic was the need to improve the present offer in order to better promote local food and to support tourists by providing them with the necessary information to appreciate it.

Overall, the informants indicate a need for innovation that comes together with the need for tools that are potentially useful for intercepting new market opportunities and public and private funding.

While the previous goals have as their main actors the rural tourist entrepreneurs, respondents pointed out a further common need linked to infrastructures and logistics. Rural areas are commonly underdeveloped in terms of communication and information infrastructure [52]. This has also led to substantial marginalisation in the touristic market. As in the case of rural Corsica or Lazio (Italy), where the informants urged for a radical improvement of public transportation in order to make some areas easily accessible, throughout Southern Europe, this issue is discussed by the professionals, identifying this point as one of the most crucial ones for the future of the sector, despite the risks of furthering urbanisation that come with the development of infrastructure [53,54].

4. Discussion

These results highlight the competences the informants consider crucial in order to reinforce the sector. The analysis identifies the priorities in terms of educational needs to address (

Table 2. Most relevant educational needs according to the focus group participants. Frequency is indicated with a 5 stars (☆) system: 1☆ a support for the competence is only sporadically indicated; 5☆ a support for the competence is always mentioned.

Competences	Frequency
Collaboration competences	☆☆☆☆
Communicational and IT competences	☆☆
Entrepreneurial and managerial competences	☆☆☆
Environmental and cultural competences	☆
Innovation competences	☆☆☆
Professional competences	☆☆☆

). Based on their frequency, it is possible to define an overall hierarchy of needs in terms of competences that sees at its apex: the most urgent, collaboration competences, then a substantial need for entrepreneurial, innovation, and professional competence, followed by communication concerns and, finally, the limited needs concerning environmental and cultural competences.

This specific configuration first confirms the profound embeddedness [55] of this form of tourism, which on the one hand relies on deep knowledge and awareness concerning the characteristics of the local areas among entrepreneurs, and on the other allows better use of the local assets in order to develop the local touristic offer.

The bulk of the educational needs is concentrated around the four categories that appertain to the everyday running of the business. This may be the result of the very professional trajectory that characterises this specific sector, based on more complex facilities and services, and heavily capitalised firms such as those of tour operators are structured based on a clear segmentation of functions of the personnel and a strong professionalisation of managers and entrepreneurs. Rural tourism, being based on small firms, is often developed in order to provide only a secondary source of income to families and farms, and lacks this professionalisation and segmentation. Education is often acquired after involvement in the sector and relies on training and workshops provided by professional organisations or government agencies. The role of educational institutions is limited in this respect. In this context, professionals look for new forms of competences, knowledge, and competences’ acquisition that do not require the interruption of their professional activity and are able to answer promptly to the needs of the everyday running and planning of the business. Thus, education, both for entrepreneurs and their employees, is crucial in order to maintain competitivity in the market and to broaden the reach of their actions.

The urgency for cooperation is also the result of the very economic and entrepreneurial characteristics of these firms. While rural tourism in all the countries the research investigated is characterised by a plurality of micro and small firms, these realities appear particularly fragmented and often unable to efficiently relate to national and regional institutions or to create solid relationships among the firms. Moreover, a lack of collaboration can also be the result of local specificities [56]. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has raised awareness among the economic actors of the need to intensify collaborations to achieve better and stronger resilience and sustainability of their business. This creates a new educational demand that public and private institutions should address, moving beyond the perimeters of traditional education in hospitality.

The research shows a sector aware of the need for support, specifically education. This need for education moves first of all in the direction of reinforcing entrepreneurship, moving away however from a model centred on pure competition. Rather, the discussion indicates a model that resonates with the idea of coopetition, an approach to the market based on the coordination of local actors in order to achieve better and mutually beneficial market performances [57]. In light of it, the centrality given to the acquisition of collaboration competences and the urgency of stronger collaboration can be read.

Collaboration among local players is key in generating synergistic effects for the tourism promotion of a specific area [58]. Kazlouski et al. [59] demonstrate that once local companies are able to activate forms of professional collaboration, they are able to perform better economically, generating a higher and more stable stream of revenues. Moreover, the creation of more stable relationships with institutional stakeholders on which to base the development of the business appears in stronger sustainability and resilience for the business, both in terms of economic performance and environmental and social preservation [60]. Thus, the scholarly debate confirms the potentialities offered by an entrepreneurial approach that rethinks and limits the competitive antagonism, specifically on a local level [61], in favour of a cooperative approach to business. In this regard, as suggested by Caffyn [62] and Wondolleck and Yaffee [63], educational initiatives should aim at strengthening those relational soft skills needed to support and intensify collaboration with other stakeholders.

The acquisition of collaboration competences is, however, connected with the strengthening of entrepreneurial and managerial competences, specifically professional competences, which are considered one of the main areas of required intervention in support of the sector. This area appears crucial considering the ancillary economic role many of these activities have in the life of professionals [20,64]. As Kizos and Iosifides [61] noticed, rural tourism enterprises are often new businesses that frequently rely on the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs who are often without specific previous experience in this sector. While the lack of specialisation and professionality is a common issue in tourism, specifically among seasonal workers [65], this problem is even more marked in rural tourism, first of all because the employees are often the family members themselves who, in most cases, have no experience in any of the main touristic services, but are hired on the basis of their kinship [66]. Moreover, even in the case of professionals with secondary or tertiary education in the field achieved in the few years after graduation, they may still end up being inadequate because they are unable to understand and anticipate the growing needs of tourism [42,43]. In this respect, entrepreneurs express a marked need for basic and advanced professional training in dealing with all the aspects of touristic services in order to be compliant with the expectations of the consumers [44]. In this respect, professional competences entail innovation competences in the particular areas linked with the analysis of the trends and the competences of developing new services e.g., [38,39,40].

Despite the literature having emphasised the area of communication and IT competences as a priority [29,60,67,68], this need appears less urgent and focused on the correct use of digital services and the acquisition of language proficiency with foreign languages, especially English.

The area least prioritised is the one concerning environmental and cultural competences. This is for the common deep knowledge of the surrounding rural tourism entrepreneurs shares. What is perceived, however, is the stronger competence to turn this knowledge into new services aimed at guiding the tourist in the exploration of the new location [61,69,70]—an area that attains the professional competences.

In light of this specific educational demand, the research highlights the cogency of the need. The urgency requires the educational response to move away from forms of long and wide training courses such as the ones commonly used in vocational education, [71] and proposes more pragmatical, short, and specific products that can provide direct answers to emergent new problems as well as more structural issues that may affect the business. In this respect, the development of these tools can be enhanced by forms of micro-educational design such as the system of micro-credential promoted by the European Union [72]. At the same time, considering the rising level of IT competences of the professionals in the face of the scarce educational infrastructures in rural areas, online solutions (from Massive Open Online Courses to more conventional digital courses) can be considered as preferred solutions.

5. Conclusions

This paper investigated the educational needs of the rural tourism sector aiming at supporting public and private institutions in the development of new tools for supporting this growing sector. In a period in which rural tourism appears to provide solid economic answers to communities and professionals, entrepreneurs are looking for tools for reinforcing their firms. In this respect, the article paves the way for some recommendations to the main shareholders of professional education, which include public and private educational institutions and professional organisations.

First of all, our research points out the urgent need for further training that encompasses all aspects of the life of a touristic firm and involves both entrepreneurs and workers. The need is actual and concerns professionals already involved in the sector; thus, tools should be developed that match the limited availability of time and mobility of these professionals. In this regard, the educational offer should move away from conventional long courses and be delivered in specific locations, generally in the city centres, while embracing flexible forms of education that can blend e-learning with specific moments of on-site teaching. Moreover, teaching should be directed toward a direct, practical application rather than remaining on a more abstract and theoretical level. While these recommendations refer to the present, prospectively there is the need to expand existing curricula in high and higher education with regard to hospitality and tourism management in order to also encompass aspects concerning the specific needs of rural tourism that have emerged from this research.

Finally, together with professional information, education should address the theme of collaboration, presenting different tools in order to establish collective actions and create a solid interface with private and public institutions. In this respect, education should fully embrace the message of coopetition. Far from being new, this concept suggests that even competing firms through the coordination of their actions can achieve better and mutually beneficial market performances. This lesson appears particularly useful both for the touristic sector in general and for rural tourism in particular [73]. From this perspective, it should be embraced in the educational curricula, indicating the strategies through which to reach such coordination and the integration of services in order to achieve a better diversification of the touristic offer as well as a more efficient promotion of the single areas.

The paper has presented the results of exploratory and qualitative research. The results, thus, are relevant but indicative in terms of future implementation. However, this limitation can be coped with in future research. This can extend the exploration to a wider area, including those European territories not investigated. Moreover, it can study in greater depth the dynamics seen in each territory by involving a larger number of informants. Finally, future research can quantitatively verify the results, improving and strengthening the guidelines offered to policymakers and training institutions concerning the new educational initiatives to put in place.