"Suncheon's Taste Becomes Tourism Content"... Gourmet Tourism Platform in Full Swing

Full-scale Launch of Discovery, Development, and Operational System for Food Content

Suncheon, a leading tourist city in Honam and known as the "City of Taste," is set to push forward with the “Building a Suncheon-style Food Content Development Platform” project, aiming to expand local cuisine as a core tourism content.

Recently, tourism consumption trends have shifted from mere sightseeing to experiential and stay-type tourism, where travelers enjoy food, spaces, and activities together. In response, the city plans to leverage the experience accumulated from the success of the "2026 Suncheon Gourmet Week" to connect local cuisine and unique venues. Their goal is to extend tourist stays and stimulate spending in local businesses.

Salt performance by Chef Hyunseok Choi and the culinary students of Hyosan High School at the Suncheon Gourmet Week cooking show. Provided by Suncheon City

The "2026 Suncheon Gourmet Week," held in June, demonstrated the potential for combining tourism resources and food to create content that encourages visitors to stay longer.

During Gourmet Week, programs such as traditional market gourmet tours, the 6·25 Commemoration Gukbap Experience, the night-time gourmet event “Nagane Janjanjan” at Naganeupseong Fortress, and the Gourmet Trail Run offered stay-type programs by integrating food with historical sites, venues, and outdoor activities. These received enthusiastic responses from visitors.

Based on the achievements of the 2026 Suncheon Gourmet Week, the city will fully launch the development of the Suncheon-style Food Content Platform starting in 2027. Plans are in place to structure the initiative around three areas—food festivals, gourmet tours, and food culture—while also identifying a sustainable lineup of gourmet tourism content candidates.

For the field of food festivals, the strategy is to enrich existing events like the Food & Art Festival by incorporating elements such as the history, exhibitions, experiences, and tastings of Suncheon cuisine, reducing overlapping events while strengthening the gourmet aspect. In the gourmet tour area, the city will establish specific tourist routes that link food, venues, history, and outdoor activities into a single itinerary.

Plans include reinterpreting existing attractions to match the latest tourism trends, such as the original downtown and Gukbap Street historical gourmet routes, as well as programs that combine walking or running with local cuisine. In the food culture segment, the city aims to spread the value of Suncheon’s culinary heritage through expert collaboration programs—such as gourmet and tourism expert talk shows and master classes on fermented foods—encouraging active participation from both residents and visitors. These will later be expanded into private sector-driven projects.

The city’s focus is not on directly managing all programs but rather on building a structure allowing for private sector participation, and eventually empowering the local community to run these programs independently in the long term.

Starting in 2028, the city will introduce seasonal and festival-linked gourmet programs based on the content pipeline developed in 2027, operated in partnership with private participants. Programs will be tailored to the tourist flow of each season, such as spring picnic-style gourmet tours and summer nighttime gourmet tours, ensuring that local businesses and the tourism sector can accumulate operational experience together.

From 2029 onward, the aim is to establish a privately led gourmet tourism operating system. Gourmet programs within major festivals will enter a phase of stabilization and enrichment, while gourmet tours will be turned into tourism products through registration on travel platforms and partnerships with private travel agencies. For food culture programs, the city will focus on strengthening the capabilities of local businesses so they can independently plan and operate these initiatives.

Through these efforts, Suncheon aims to ensure that the success achieved with Gourmet Week is not just a one-time event, but rather evolves into a flagship gourmet tourism brand that attracts tourists, encourages them to stay, and boosts spending in the city.

Hoonmo Son, Mayor of Suncheon, commented, “The 2026 Suncheon Gourmet Week was a meaningful achievement, demonstrating that Suncheon’s food resources can be expanded into tourism content. Beginning in 2027, we will use these results to build a sustainable Suncheon-style gourmet tourism platform, aiming to increase visitor stays and stimulate spending in local businesses, ultimately revitalizing the regional economy.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.