Healthy Living in Southern Illinois
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Presented at the Building a Healthier Community Leader's Forum on October 27, 2011 in Carbondale, Illinois.
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Healthy Living in Southern Illinois
- 1. LIVING HEALTHY in SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
- 2. FIND THE RIGHT balance
- 3. foodies ENJOY FOOD FOR PLEASURE
- 4. culinary tourist TRAVELS TO ENJOY FOOD
- 5. WE CAUSED confusion!
- 8. Nicole L. Davis, PhD Hospitality and Tourism Administration Southern Illinois University ndavis@siu.edu @TalkingTourism Debbie Moore Executive Director Carbondale Convention and Tourism Bureau www.cctb.org @FoodFunFolks
Editor's Notes
- Healthy lifestyle isn’t always about eating healthy food – living healthy means finding the right balance between work and play, friends and family, eating clean foods – at least most of the time - and staying active. Southern Illinois lets us do all of this in our own backyards. The bonus, we can attract travelers to the area with the same ideas, too! Which is exactly what we began many years ago with the Southern Illinois Culinary Tourism Destination project – which we officially launched in 2008 after a lot of research and fine tuning.
- While culinary tourism isn't a new idea – it’s very popular now – it was a concept that Jackson County tourism folks were virtually unfamiliar with when we began this adventure, so we had a lot of awareness building to do. As usual, we found ourselves ahead of the game!A foodie is essentially anyone who enjoys food and wine or beer for pleasure. A foodie can be a chef on one extreme and simply someone who enjoys the experience on the other.
- The traditional culinary traveler is someone who visits a destination specifically to partake in food and/or wine/beer related activities. Along with this passion comes that of people and culture…a logical mix. This niche traveler is evolving, however. Now the culinary enthusiast is not only interested in food, wine, and people, she is interested in learning about where the food comes from, who the people are, and the heritage surrounding the destination.
- But, this whole notion of culinary tourism was foreign to Jackson and the surrounding counties in 2007 when we began our research – it was confusing … people really travel for food? So, we had to build awareness and do some training!Our research showed that training needed to be primarily tied to customer service, but there was also a need to create “training” around culinary tourism in general and how to leverage this new niche traveler. We hosted several tourism conferences that allowed us to bring together the local tourism world to do exactly this.
- Food, Fun & Folks is the message we want to send about southern Illinois. We have great traditional food; we have local awarding winning wines; we have hometown festivals; we have southern hospitality; we have what the culinary traveler wants! We also have what the southern Illinois resident wants! Either way, it’s easy for residents to create balance in all aspects of our lives.We’ve been recreating Carbondale and Jackson county, and to some extent, the southern 22 counties, as a culinary destination. It has taken relationships across the counties to make this happen…a little cooperation among competitors will make this region stand out.We’ve published a regional heritage cookbook and launched a quarterly magazine to help build awareness both locally and in out travel markets.
- Although it is really too early to know how well this is working for us as a destination, we do have a bit of insight. While the economy has forced a drop in nationwidetourism for a couple years, Carbondale and Jackson County held tight , even while Illinois as a whole was seeing declines in traveler numbers. So … something is working! Fortunately, we’re on the rebound as a whole, so we anticipate increased traveler numbers over the next several years.