Culture promotion through food tourism: A case of Qatar’s local cuisine

Globally food has been considered a unifying factor that cuts across boundaries even of languages. Destinations have been at the forefront of the tourism industry mainly due to their culinary offerings. Trends such as street food markets and local food tours have become popular with many tourism destinations. Qatar is considered a conservative nation with a great potential for its culinary culture to feature prominently through its tourism offerings. The aim of this research is to understand how a destination’s food culture may sway visitors to visit or re-visit that destination. Further, what role Qatar’s cultural cuisine can influence the promotion of the country’s heritage globally. A focus and development of the nation’s culinary policies and packages in the promotion of its cultural heritage was the end intent of this study. Focus groups discussions were employed in attaining results. The results were formulated and interpreted around context; internal consistency; frequency; intensity of comments; specificity of responses; extensiveness and the big picture. The discussions reveal that Qatar offers a vibrant Middle Eastern culinary experience for tourists; however, its conservativeness can be a bit of a letdown for some travelers especially the drinking aspect of the food tourism offerings which is restricted and confined to certain spaces. The research concludes by recommending to authorities to introspect some of their stances with regards to rigidity in this sector of the tourism.