The Effect of Geographical Indications over Tourism Marketing: Case of Turkey

In changing and developing world conjunction, competition is not only among products, services or companies, but also between countries and cities. We can list many traditional methods that increase competitive power in tourism and destination marketing. Countries that are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from traditional methods have found that they should not look too far away. Today, geographical indications are used as effective tools in nation-branding and in creating awareness in tourism industry. Geographical indications are marks indicating the origin of a product. These marks symbolize that a product is identified with a locality, area, region or country of origin with a distinctive characteristic feature, reputation or other qualities. For example; geographically labeled food products carry the characteristics of the geographical region; such as Tanzania's Kilimanjaro coffee, which can't be produced outside of that specific origin and is unique to that geography. it is believed that geographically indicated food products contribute to regions and countries on where they are grown/produced, as well as contributing to the geographical region where the origin of the national market is located within the global market. Tourism is an industry directly affected by the political and economic conjuncture and it is showing a constant development and change in Turkey as well as all over the world. This study investigates the role of products protected under geographical labeling on tourism marketing. As a methodology, in-depth interviews will be done with those who work in Turkey's leading tourism agencies where the geographical indication products are used as a promotional tool in tourism marketing.