DISHCOVER TRAVEL

With food being the primary motivation, they want to go out off the beaten path and experience a place with all their senses and flexibly, trends that were enhanced during the pandemic. Still, they find themselves in a jumble of tourist or anonymous reviews and generic posts for known destinations, often ending up in tourist traps. At the same time, less-known destinations also miss the opportunity to boost their local economies because of a lack of know-how and capacity in managing, developing, and promoting their distinctive characteristics and culinary resources that, in a different case, would provide them with a competitive advantage.

Challenge overview

Dishcover Piraeus project is part of Dishcover and was created during the pandemic. Since ancient times, Piraeus has been one of the most important Greek ports, as well as, a unique mosaic of cultures and cuisines. However, most of the port’s visitors, deterred by the first impression and having insufficient information, just pass by, missing all the fascinating culinary and cultural delights that Piraeus has to offer.

While collaborating with the Municipality of Piraeus and Destination Piraeus (the DMO), Dishcover aims to reverse this phenomenon by assisting the municipality in establishing Piraeus as the next hot gastronomy destination. To do so, Dishcover analysed the culinary heritage, value chain and resources of the place and highlighted its unique, multicultural culinary culture, history, and scene. Dishcover Piraeus is the first ever project in Greece that has recorded, created and evaluated a destination’s culinary portfolio using primary research (e.g. oral history) and data analytics. Subsequently, Dishcover used the findings to provide Piraeus with an effective tool to inspire visitors to “taste the city” for sustainable impact (through the web application, its culinary walks and local ambassadors’ guides) and guide the municipality over the steps to achieve its vision. The project was created and implemented in the following steps:

• Used online and association sources to record the local gastronomy enterprises and value chain
• Implemented sentiment analysis using data analytics to evaluate the current culinary offering and define the areas of competitive advantage and those in need of further support
• Defined and designed three culinary walks based on both the analysis and cultural heritage of Piraeus
• Conducted both secondary and primary research (e.g. interviews) to create original content for the walks, as well as the portfolio
• Picked five gastronomy pioneers of Piraeus, such as Lefteris Lazarou, the first chef awarded a Michelin star for a Greek cuisine restaurant and created signature Local Ambassador guides.
• Drafted a food tourism trends and best practices analysis and developed case studies on the ports as gastronomy destinations and the utilisation of Big Data for developing food tourism.

Establishment of the organisation/initiative/enterprise

The idea to establish Dishcover came from the notion of the founder Dimitri Georgiou to narrate stories through flavours and at the same time support the beaten destinations to attract visitors sustainably and visitors discover these destinations through senses.

Management structure and governance

Dishcover is a mission-led, for-profit organisation, whose founder and CEO is Dimitri Georgiou. Other members of the management team are the co-founder Stavros Patouxeas and two software engineers, helping in maintaining the site attractive and in sponsoring it.

Principles of work, objectives and activities

The key words to describe Dischcover are sustainability, inclusivity, and equal rights. The services are designed in such a way to have a measurable, sustainable impact on the local communities, as well as promote only the places that respect and foster people’s equality, despite their sexual orientation, religious views, or any other personal beliefs. After all, these are ideas reflected in the work of Dishcover’s local ambassadors.

Moreover, it aims to promote balanced, sustainable tourism growth by challenging the current boundaries among tourism, culture, and gastronomy with the help of technology. Indicative projects include:

• Dishcover Piraeus: as described above
• Athens in a cup: the user tastes coffee at six of the best coffee shops in Athens and wanders 200 years of Athenian history sip by sip, walking along with the locations of legendary cafes.
• Table Deconstructed: a project to explore the valuable relationship between art and local products and its ability to attract visitors from major metropolis in less touristy areas.
• Dishcover Igoumenitsa: an eye-catching culinary tour, local ambassador guides and recording of food memories to assist the destination in benefiting from the two million passengers who pass every year from its port.

Target groups

The target groups of Dishcover are domestic and international travellers and authentic experience seekers, as well as, locals willing to explore their city uniquely and experimentally. Everyone can choose a specific place to visit. Тhen, they can select a guide and start a paid tour with them.

Innovation

Dishcover is an innovative web-based app which offers an alternative way to explore the city. The main characteristics of the app are Editorial and minimalistic aesthetics; Flexibility; Fully responsive; Integrated capabilities of analytics; Bite-size, exclusive, authentic information; user-friendly. On top of these, the innovation of the Dishcover Piraeus project has to do with the introduction of data analytics, original content creation, and local synergies for creating culinary walks and local ambassador guides and decision making.

Key partners

The key partners are different for each project Dishcover is developing. In the case of Dishcover Piraeus, the key partners are the Municipality of Piraeus and Destination Piraeus, its DMO. The team cooperated with local trade, cultural and other associations to record and create the content.

Impact and Evaluation

Dishcover has a significant impact on the local business since it is one of the main work principles. Dishcover Piraeus already brought the following results:

• Recorded more than 1000 firms 
• Gathered 108 local recipes and 72 culinary stories 
• Synergy with 9 associations 
• Developed 3 walks and 5 guides  
• The DMO already enhanced travel trade relationships using Dishcover Piraeus provided material

Recommendations

The most important recommendation is to provide services that would be innovative and would serve the constantly changing needs of the clients in the specific sector. More and more people are looking for an alternative, interesting and engaging way to explore the cultures and places as locals, so the services should expand the traditional ways and approaches.

Lessons Learned

The abovementioned deliverables of Dishcover Piraeus provide a robust idea of the approach. The team of Dishcover is always eager for new, innovative partnerships or know-how transfer/exchange that can challenge and push further the current borders in the sections of tourism, culture, and gastronomy, using both creative and scientific methods.

References

The Dishcover Travel website.