Capturing the Economic Value of Mzansi’s Local Cuisine Through Storytelling in Tourism

Abstract

Mzansi, the colloquial name for South Africa (SA) (from the Xhosa noun uMzantzi, meaning "South"), has a vast and varied national cuisine, known as the Rainbow Cuisine, that is relatively unexplored. The 2^nd UN Tourism Regional Forum on Gastronomy Tourism for Africa, Arusha, identified the need to strengthen local food ecosystems as a top priority, suggesting engagement with producers, the safeguarding of culinary heritage through the promotion and use of native crops, documentation of products, processes and traditional recipes, and more sustainable food systems. In other research, Local Economic Development (LED) has demonstrated that using local food can drive a destination’s competitiveness, add value to local economies, and foster tourism loyalty through high satisfaction with gastronomic offerings. The aim of this research was to present the local food-related travel tendencies of SA tourists, with a view to making recommendations to food entrepreneurs. An electronic questionnaire was made available to local South African tourists through Qualtrics. It included a demographic section to ensure participation by South African residents living and travelling locally, as well as a second section to record personal travel tendencies. Of the 276 valid responses, 97.5% indicated that they always/sometimes search for local foods when travelling locally, while 72.8% visited a local independent restaurant and 52% a food market. Our results indicate that each traveller had a mean of 4.33 (on a 5-point Likert scale) food related activities during their travels, that they were willing to try new foods (m = 4.37); purchase local food to take home (m = 4.29); can remember the food they consumed during their travels (m = 4.29); enjoy eating new foods (m = 4.27), and read up about places to eat before commencing with travels (m = 4.17). Local tourists' curiosity about other cultures’ food (m = 4.16) and their desire to eat where locals eat (m = 4.16) were also highly important. These results clearly demonstrate the advantages, importance, and multiple benefits of local and cultural foods, along with storytelling, that food and hospitality entrepreneurs can utilise in their marketing and offerings to harness economic benefits and build national pride, thereby delivering broader, even inter-regional, socio-economic benefits.