St. Petersburg’s Gastronomic Brand Goes International

Scholars at HSE St. Petersburg have published their research in a new monograph for international tourism professionals.

Dr. Valery Gordin, Deputy Director of HSE St. Petersburg and Head of the Laboratory of Cultural Economics, together with Dr. Yulia Trabskaya, Leading Research Fellow at the Laboratory of Cultural Economics, authored a chapter for a book entitled ‘Tourism Management, Marketing, and Development. Performance, Strategies, and Sustainability’. Palgrave Macmillan, a leading global publisher, issued this volume in December 2015.

The project brought together several academics from Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia, uniting their various approaches to the development of the tourism industry. The project was initiated by globally recognized experts in this area – Dr. Marcello M. Mariani, Professor at the University of Bologna (Italy) and Dr. Dimitrios Buhalis, Director of the eTourism Lab at Bournemouth University (UK).

Dr. Gordin and Dr. Trabskaya prepared the chapter entitled ‘Saint Petersburg as a Tourist Destination: Searching for the Gastronomic Brand’. Dr. Gordin noted that despite being based on the case study of St. Petersburg, their research represented a unified approach and methodology that could be applied to create a development strategy for any tourist destination. This feature makes their research relevant for this collectively written book.

‘In our study, we united sociocultural and culinary aspects and demonstrated their mutual penetration in the framework of one tourist destination, namely St. Petersburg’, Dr. Gordin said. ‘Experts used to think about gastronomy as a supplementary sector within the hospitality industry, but today, we see that it is becoming self-sufficient. At the same time, in the majority of tourist destinations, its self-dependence is based on historical heritage. Our study was meant to find sociocultural components in a gastronomic brand and unite them in order to achieve a synergy effect for successful and sustainable performance and advancement of the tourism industry’.

‘We were very flattered to be invited to take part in this project’, Dr. Trabskaya admitted. ‘We hope that the results of our work will contribute to strengthening St. Petersburg’s position as a popular city among international travellers. Our city clearly needs to define and promote its gastronomic “face” in the global arena. Hence, HSE St. Petersburg and our lab are at the forefront of the search for local culinary identity as a part of our cultural and historical heritage’.

The publication of Dr. Gordin and Dr. Trabskaya’s joint book entitled ‘Gastronomic Brands of Destinations: Approaches and Application’ preceded their role in preparing this monograph.