Gastronomy as a part of the ecuadorian identity: Positioning on the internet and social networks

Abstract

Gastronomy is one of the distinguishing marks of greater strength to build the image of a destination, since it creates new motivations for travellers: culinary tourism. This is raising the interest of tourist managers for stressing the culinary singularities of regions, countries, and specific areas. In Ecuador, the Government has launched a specific action to give value to traditional and innovative dishes. It promotes gastronomy through competitions among local chefs and around four specific dishes: the encebollado; the hornado; the colada morada and the fanesca, since they are the most representative and consumed of Ecuador. This research aims to identify the positioning in social media of Ecuadorian gastronomy and the above-mentioned dishes. In such a way, it has been studied the positioning of these dishes in the main search engine—Google—and analysed the presence on Facebook and YouTube.