Despite travel restrictions and challenges, FoodTreX Spain was still a resounding success. Approximately 70 delegates from all around the world joined the Summit last week, both live in person in Pamplona, Spain, and virtually online. “The quality of the content and the technical visits was outstanding,” shared Erik Wolf, Executive Director of the World Food Travel Association. A few of the session highlights included Barbara Zmrzlikar, from the Slovenian Tourist Board, who talked about the country’s efforts to integrate its green, sustainable strategies into its gastronomy tourism marketing. And Sean P. O’Rourke, from EA Tour Specialist, talked about how to develop new food and beverage tour products in our changing world. Another great example was shared by Juan Francisco Martínez Carrasco, from Turismo de la Región de Murcia, who presented the case study of his region’s successful pivot this year to reach out to area residents to build community pride and recognition of gastronomy in Murcia. And London, UK-based consummate media professional Chantal Cooke from Panpathic Communications, talked about the best ways to craft and share culinary travel messaging in today’s complex environment.
The food served during the Summit was outstanding, featuring Navarre’s special products like white asparagus and roasted peppers, world-class wines, and many more delicacies. Site visits included Donezar, a renowned confiteria (sweets shop) that has been in the same family since it opened in 1853. Besides world-class candies, chocolates, honey and nut products, the shop also supplies hand-made ceremonial candles of the highest quality to event organizers. Another memorable site visit was to La Vieja Fabrica, Museum of Conservation & Canning. The museum showed the history of vegetable preservation and canning in the region, and its enormous impact on the area’s history, economy, culinary culture and social fabric of this region of the Navarre province.
It was a year of quality, rather than quantity. The program was smaller than usual, but the content, the speakers, the site visits and the delegates who were able to attend, made it truly an outstanding event. We hope you can join us at the Fifth Annual FoodTreX Spain event in early 2022.
