01/16/2019

Meet Outside the Box: Food Tourism for Team Building

Encourage new and lasting connections at a freewheeling networking event

Conferences, working lunches and dinners, and team-building events are still focused on their primary objectives—knowledge building and networking—but event organizers hungry for memorable professional development should think about food as an opportunity to create experiences that are more likely to engage attendees than standard hotel and convention center fare.

“Food and beverage is the glue that pulls an event together. It’s the one of the few elements of a meeting that affect all of our senses,” said Mark Cooper, CEO of IACC, an association of meeting venues and suppliers, in the association’s 2018 report.

Food tourism is a burgeoning industry. More than 75 percent of global travelers select destinations to experience the food, according to a report from Food Travel Monitor. AAA reports that 22 million Americans expected to take a food-focused vacation within the next year.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.