Research of the awareness of the city of the creative gastronomy of UNESCO Hatay with perspective to local actors

In this study, it was aimed to examine the level of awareness of Hatay, which was declared a city of creative gastronomy in 2017 within the scope of UNESCO, by local actors. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with local actors in Antioch and Defne. The interviews were conducted between October and December 2019 using the deliberate sampling method. A total of 61 interview data were obtained from the interviews. Content analysis was applied to the obtained data taking into account its suitability for the purpose of the study. Based on the content analysis, it was concluded that local actors have a high level of knowledge and awareness of Hatay's tourism assets, perceptions of the city of gastronomy, customer information activities, advertising and marketing activities. All these results indicate that local actors have a high level of knowledge and awareness for the declaration of Hatay as a UNESCO City of creative gastronomy. However, due to the deficiencies of advertising, promotion, marketing and similar activities aimed at Creative gastronomy city, activities aimed at regional investments and projects were insufficient. Due to these shortcomings, it was concluded that developments in Hatay towards gastronomy tourism remained at a limited level. In addition, it has been stated that the negativities developed due to the fact that the province of Hatay is a border region also negatively affects the image of the creative gastronomy city. Based on the results obtained, various suggestions have been presented to improve the image of the creative gastronomy city and gastronomy tourism in Hatay and to direct further research.