The Flavors That Connect Us

The Decision Brief Vikas Khanna, Chef, Author & Humanitarian Moderated by Sree Sreenivasan, Digimentors THE VERDICT Khanna reminded everyone at Skift Global Forum what travelers actually come for: an experience. He said food tourism is “one of the most essential parts why people travel. “Hotels, beaches — that’s all okay. But if you know that there is something being cooked or giving you an experience from food, there’s a chance the family would travel.” The industry’s investment in technology is designed to get the traveler to that type of moment. PATHS FORWARD Use food as an anchor for destination strategy. Khanna cited Australia as a country that used food as a tourism driver “more than heritage sites, more than anything else.” He said food is “a living art, and you can be a part of something much bigger.” People fly to New York specifically for his restaurant — Bungalow has a 10,000-person waiting list and sells out within 10 seconds of opening reservations daily. Destinations that lead with food give travelers a reason to come that no competitor can replicate. Invest in depth. Khanna said “we don’t need to have bigger things. We need to have deeper things.” His signature yogurt kebab takes two days to make and has a 40% success rate — “if they don’t fry it at the right time, in the right way, it opens.” Travelers remember and return for experiences that can only be produced in a single time and place. Let food and culture reframe how the world sees a country. Khanna said the Western label of “developing nation” dismisses civilizations with thousands of years of depth. He called countries like India “reincarnating nations” and said “our tourism will never rise if we start visiting Paris, and we are going to search for Paris in those countries.” Destinations that present themselves through someone else’s framework fail to set their own standard. WHAT TO WATCH Khanna said artists, poets, and chefs “can create that energy of a country they come from” and that “it somehow reflects on the DNA of those people’s eyes.” The deepest cultural ambassadors — the ones who spent decades mastering a craft rooted in a place — are the ones who change how the world sees a destination. Access all the Skift Takeaways from this event, as well as full session videos, presentation documents, and more editorial coverage at our Skift Global Forum attendees hub.