The view of tourist guide candidates to gastronomy tourism

Turkey is a promising destination for gastronomic tourism with its gastronomic heritage. Therefore, it is significant that the tourist guide candidates to believe in the necessity of mastering and putting forward their knowledge on Turkish Cuisine, clarifying the issues on how to manage the food and beverage operations on the travel routes and specializing as a gastronomic guide. It is important how each destination can bring supply potential to tourism in every field. There should also be an awareness of the gastronomic supply potential and this potential needs to be revealed and given 'local identity' and the tourist guide candidates should also be informed. The purpose of this study is how this information will be provided to the guide candidates and how these candidates will be informed about 'gastronomic local identities' and also how the gastronomic local identities will be protected. When the geography in which our country is located is evaluated with the gastronomic elements it contains, which are particularly attractive factors in terms of tourism, it creates deep and high effective riches. However, it is not known how much this situation is evaluated as an advantage. In order to take the gastronomy tourism further, it is necessary that the introduction of our rich culinary culture should be the main target and the awareness of the tourist guide candidates on this subject should start to be given at the undergraduate level in a sufficient manner. However, it is clear from the undergraduate education curricula that adequate and high quality education and training is not provided to tour guide candidates in the gastronomic tourism dimension. In this study, document analysis and questionnaire will be used as data collection technique within the framework of qualitative approach. However, participation will be limited because the questionnaires have applied to students of the Department of Travel and Management and Tourism Guidance at the Faculty of Hacı Bayram Veli University. It is thought that the education of all professionals, especially students who are educated in the field of tourism, on gastronomy tourism at the undergraduate level will contribute to the future of gastronomy tourism. It is emphasized once again that all kinds of applications are important in the field of guidance as in all fields of tourism. In order to encourage and increase the training of gastronomy guides who can provide effective and efficient service, to protect sustainability and not to compromise on originality, it should not be overlooked that the undergraduate curricula of tourism guide candidates are not sufficient in terms of gastronomy tourism and the results that are reached on this issue should not be disregarded.