The economic impact of gastronomic tourism: the Ubud food festival

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to assess the economic impact in Bali during the Covid-19 pandemic by proposing the case of Ubud Food Festival 2019 with input-output analysis. Due to the outbreak, most scheduled festivals in 2020 have been cancelled, including Ubud Food Festival 2020. Computing the festival impact generated by 54 sectors in Bali’s economy, this study constructs regional output, value-added, and income multipliers. The result figured that among the gastronomic tourism-related sector, the food and beverage service industry has the largest number on regional output multiplier, recreational and sporting activities have the largest number on value-added multiplier, and the transportation support service industry has the largest number on income multiplier. Considering the backward linkage and large multiplier numbers of the tourism sector, gastronomic tourism could be the ‘key’ sector to expand Bali’s economic growth.