Développement du tourisme durable. Une étude du tourisme culturel dans le delta du Mékong

This research aims to contribute the linking international tourism development and preservation of cultural heritages by considering food consumption as a vehicle of cultural identity and corollary, a source of tourist attraction. A discussion on the relationship between food consumption, cultural and destination identity is developed, while an attemps to apply the concept of distance underlying the New Economic Geography (NEG) to our issue (notably in sociological and marketing perspectives) is suggested. To achieve the purpose of this study, which focuses on the big question "How can a host country connect food, cultural identity and tourist attraction?", the author has pursued an extesive literature review, which thoroughly analyses available thoeries, reviews and contemporary journals. Our research explores a country's attractiveness in international tourism by focusing on the demand side. To this purpose, we rely on the sociological approach of food consumption that has been developed in the literature. Evidence from a numbert of studies suggests that tourist's interests in an preferences for food in a destination can play a significant role in affecting their destination choice. We set out the view that this king of literature provides a useful way of thinking about "distances" out of the Euclidean distnace, notably when it concerns the construction of "familiarity" that builds tourist' motivation in choosing a destination. By bridging the gap between mobility / globalization, tourist food demand and culture, our contribution is here to investigate how tourism actors can affect the location decisions of tourists.