At the Skift Global Forum, chef, author and humanitarian Vikas Khanna made a blunt case to the travel industry: people don't book flights for lobbies and pools. They book them for what's on the plate. Hotels and beaches are "okay," he said, but a family will travel for the promise of a food experience — and destinations that understand this have an advantage nothing else can copy.
Khanna, who runs Bungalow in New York, is living proof of the pull. The restaurant has a waiting list of 10,000 people, and reservations sell out within ten seconds of opening each day. Travellers fly in specifically to eat there. That, he argued, is what happens when a destination — or in this case, a single restaurant — offers something nobody else can replicate.
His advice to destinations was refreshingly simple: go deep, not big. Rather than chasing grander attractions, regions should invest in depth. He pointed to his own signature yogurt kebab, which takes two days to make and has a 40% success rate — get the frying wrong and it falls apart. That kind of fragile, time-bound craft can only exist in one place at one moment, which is exactly why people remember it and come back.
Khanna also cited Australia as a country that built a tourism strategy around food more than around heritage sites, and it worked. The lesson for others: food isn't a garnish on a destination's marketing, it can be the whole pitch.
There was a bigger point underneath all of this. Khanna pushed back on the Western "developing nation" label, calling places like India "reincarnating nations" with civilisations thousands of years deep. His warning: tourism in such countries will never reach its potential if visitors arrive trying to find Paris there. A destination that frames itself through someone else's lens never sets its own standard. Chefs, artists and poets, he added, are the ambassadors who genuinely change how the world sees a country — the craft they've spent decades rooted in place shows in everything they serve.
For travellers, the takeaway is an easy one. If you're choosing between destinations, the one with a distinctive, living food culture — street snacks, regional specialities, restaurants people queue overnight for — will almost always give you a richer trip than the one with a newer infinity pool. Follow the kitchens. For destination marketers, the message is that a single unforgettable dish can do more for bookings than a glossy campaign, because food is something travellers can taste, remember and chase again.
Skift
