The Future of Food Tourism - Food Tourism: A Practical Marketing Guide - page 221

Consumer trust in food has become a key issue for food choice. For
example, the production process of food is not always transparent for consumers.
To provide more transparency and to enhance consumer trust, different ini-
tiatives communicating traceability to consumers exist. Visualized trace-
ability systems, such as the initiative 'Bio mit Gesicht' ( www.bio-mit-gesicht.
de) in Germany allow consumers to gather information about the farmer
who has produced the food as well as information about his farm and family,
will become more common place.
Halk (1993) 2,3 examined mistrust by consumers in food and found that
consumers do not trust or mistrust a piece of food itself, they trust or mistrust
the actors who are responsible for the production, processing, marketing and
control of the food. Again this is one area where food tourism has an oppor-
tunity to remove doubt.
A number of previous studies on the consumption of organic food identi-
fied trust as one of the most crucial aspects when consumers decide whether
or not to buy organic products (e.g. Naspetti and Zanoli, 2009 4 ).
Different possibilities for consumers to investigate the origin of their
food have already been developed to assist consumers to research the ori-
gins of their food. One example is 'Nature and More' ( www.natureandmore.
com ) . Nature and More customers enter the number stamped on the product
on the homepage and can obtain information on the product's origin and
how sustainable that product is.
The aim of these initiatives is to create transparency for consumers.
Increased transparency might enhance consumer trust in food, especially or-
ganic products, and it is critical in building food tourism in the future.
Trust in food origin and in organic food can be conceptualized as a
multidimensional concept embracing the consumers' willingness to rely on
other actors such as farmers, retailers, certification bodies, or labels (' trusting
intention ') on the one hand, and consumer beliefs in the trustworthiness of
these actors (' trusting beliefs ') on the other.
Food and water will also be two critical issues as we move into an area
where we are going to see an increase in the global population and the effects
of climate change.
Food tourism is becoming and will continue as a major tourist activity
and we will see more governments and tourist organizations take more
interest in developing this sector.
The big change we are about to experience is a sector that is moving from
being a 'cottage' industry into a serious major tourist activity and that means
larger businesses will want a slice of the action.
The legislation that revolves around the local food tourist sector will be-
come more strict and we will see the development of accreditation.
Food Tourism Accreditation
To reach their full potential, food tourism ventures will need to up-skill their
standards to meet the needs of today's more demanding consumers. State,