Already a hundred experiences for La Route Culinaire de Tunisie
After several weeks of training, during which over 150 project leaders from all over Tunisia were able to optimize their assets and skills to create creative culinary experiences, the Culinary Road of Tunisia has reached a first validation phase with the organization of a series of technical visits by the Creative Tourism Network®.who is in charge of implementing the Culinary and Creative Tunisia project.
Around a hundred visits were made throughout the country, particularly in the regions defined as part of the Route, focusing on six flagship products: Cheese from the North-West, Harissa from Cap Bon, Olive Oil from the Centre and Dahar, Wine from the North, Dates from the South-West and Octopus from Kerkennah.
These visits highlighted the wide variety of local players involved in the Culinary Route: farmers, associations and Groupements de Développement Agricole (GDA), guest houses and tables d’hôtes, travel agents, among others.
Their tourism offers are built around experiences that invite tourists to take part in the fertilization of dates in the oasis cultures of the South-West, to make harissa, designated an Intangible Heritage by UNESCO in December 2022, to make their own olive oil in the underground oil mills of Djerba or Dahar, to learn all the secrets that make octopus fishing in Kerkennah so unique, to immerse themselves in the world of wine producers, or to elaborate cheeses in the heart of “Tunisian Switzerland”, to name but a few.
During these visits, those who had requested it were able to prototype, test and enrich their offers, putting them in perspective with the new demands of travelers – national and international – in search of authenticity and human values thanks to a year-round tourism offering.
Indeed, new tourism paradigms, accelerated by the pandemic, have highlighted Tunisia’s assets in welcoming these new traveler profiles, and the relevance of a project like the Culinary Route in recreating an ecosystem that can generate synergies between professionals from various sectors such as farmers, craftsmen, associative organizations, cultural players and creative industries, and of course, tourism, catering and hotel professionals.
With this in mind, initiatives such as the eductour organized by the Tunisian Federation of Travel and Tourism Agencies on June 20 in the Siliana region, around the theme of cultural and sustainable tourism, demonstrated the sector’s interest in providing this essential link in the diversification of the offer, and sealed the promise of fruitful future collaborations.
The Creative Tourism Network®, for its part, brings the experience of strategies of this type, developed on other continents, always with the same objective of rapidly and inclusively energizing destinations, in the perspective of the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The next steps will be the creation of commercial sheets for each of the experiences created, and their international promotion, which will help position these offers and Tunisia as a whole in these virtuous and booming tourist markets.
