The Role of Local Food in Maldives Tourism - Scholarly Commons ...

For these reasons local producers have difficulties in delivering fresh products to
hoteliers even if sufficient supplies are available. Sharma (2005) disclosed the factors
that affect linkages between local food production and tourist hotels: conventional tastes
of tourists, low cost of imported foods, willingness of hotels to pay more in return for
high quality and reliability of imported products and ignorance on the part of hotel
operators about local products. In addition, local producers may not be aware how to
establish contact with tourist establishments. These factors are echoed in operators’
explanations of the constraints they face in purchasing the right quality and quantity of
local products and why they opt for regular deliveries of imported products. An operator
stated that “90% of the food products are imported or purchased from an agent in Male’
due to unavailability of products in local markets.”
Another obstacle in linking local food and tourism was noted as the restricted access for
tourists to experience local ways of life due to the isolated nature of tourist resorts. It
was stated by an expert that this compels tourists to experience “only half of the sunny
side of Maldives”. “Maldives – the sunny side of life” is a widely used slogan by MTPB
in tourism marketing. As one commentator stated, the other half of ‘the sunny side’ is
about “how we live, what we eat and how we celebrate together”. Tourism operators
and experts concurred that local culinary events are a way to display culture and
tradition for tourists, and expressed that tourists are interested in visiting local islands
and experiencing local culture. However, it was revealed that opportunities are rare for
such activities because cultural tours or festivals for tourists in inhabited islands have
not developed.
In spite of the fact that fish was found to be the only local food that was really promoted
in the marketing materials, it is an unexpected finding that tourism operators do not
believe seafood, fish and fish products could be further developed for the tourism
industry. Only one respondent selected seafood, fish and fish products as a potential
local product that could be developed for the tourism industry (see figure 6.2). From the
marketing materials it was found that fish and seafood were often presented as non-local
dishes. Therefore, the fact that operators do not believe that seafood, fish and fish
products could be developed for tourism suggests that operators are unsure of tourists’
reaction to local dishes. This argument is reinforced by the statement from an operator
that read that the spicy nature of most local foods as well as limitation of varieties could
deter the appeal of local food for foreigners. At the same time, it was also warned that
modification of local food to tourists’ tastes carries the risk of affecting the identity of
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