Food tourism for regional sustainable development : Challenges in Collaborations for local Restaurants on Gotland

Abstract: This thesis explores the challenges local restaurants face in collaborations within thecontext of food tourism development on Gotland. For the past few years, themunicipality of Gotland as showed interests and efforts in developing the island into asustainable food destination. In this process, collaborations between keys actors, oneof which is local restaurants, is one of the most important components. Therefore,studying the challenges presenting in this area would be beneficial to future strategyand planning for development. This study was conducted through interviews withseveral established restaurants on Gotland to understand their perspectives on theobstacles that hinder co-operations in the food tourism sector. Qualitative methodswith narrative analysis were implemented to evaluate the results. It is shown that localrestaurants face several challenges when collaborating in the process of food tourismdevelopment on Gotland. According to them, the most prominent obstacle is the lackof a main driving force to stimulate a strong and reliable network for collaborationson the island. The paper concludes by proposing the establishment of a Food TourismBoard under Gotland Visitor Association (GFB). This agency will act as the maindriving force to develop and encourage co-operations and related projects in foodtourism on Gotland.