Food is an essential component of travel; as it is a basic daily need, it constitutes a significant portion of travel expenses [26]. According to Wolf and the World Food Travel Association [27], travelers spend approximately 25% of their travel budget on food and beverage (F&B). This percentage can reach up to 35% in expensive destinations and drop to around 15% in more affordable ones. Because gastronomic tourists (i.e., tourists whose main reason for travel is to indulge in culinary experiences) do not merely eat to satisfy their hunger but also wish to explore the local gastronomy, they generally spend more than the average 25% that is spent by travelers [27,28,29].

Gastronomy has become an important feature of tourism. It is a creative part of cultural tourism, enabling tourists to discover a destination through its food, wine, and culture [30]. Experiencing gastronomy while on vacation has been compared with the “consumption of local heritage” [3]. One’s memories of a place can be strongly associated with the gastronomic experiences that they had there and the people that they shared them with. Destinations can be perceived not only visually but also in terms of soundscape, smellscape, and tastescape [31]. Certain foods become synonymous with specific locations, for example, hot dogs with New York, kebab with Istanbul, gyros with Greece, sauerkraut with Germany, and paella and tapas with Spain [32]. In Mediterranean destinations such as Italy and France, gastronomy holds a central role as a principal, core resource. This is the cradle of haute cuisine featuring upscale gastronomic establishments, luxury and gourmet restaurants, and fine dining. However, in most destinations, gastronomy is still considered a supporting resource as the destination’s image is associated with other resources such as culture or recreation; therefore, gastronomy can play a pivotal role in positioning and developing undifferentiated primary resources [5,33].

Gastronomic tourism is still a rather new topic within the tourism industry, and it has gained increased attention since the turn of the millennium; it establishes connections between tourists and the destination’s culture [34]. Bornhorst et al. [35] argue that a destination’s success hinges on a unique location, accessibility, attractive products and services, quality visitor experiences, and community support. Destinations thus face the challenge of shaping an appealing multidimensional offer, and it can be said that the success of a tourism business is the outcome of a destination’s competitive tourism offer [36].

(Service) quality can play a vital role in enhancing the competitiveness of a tourism destination as it serves as a source of competitive advantage. Martin [37] defines service quality as “the ability to consistently meet external and internal customer needs, wants, and expectations involving procedural and personal encounters”. Many scholars have employed modified versions of the original SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman et al. [22] to measure service quality across various types of services (e.g., DINESERV: Stevens [23], DINESCAPE: Ryu and Jang [38], etc. [21,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]) (Table 1).

Quality is a prerequisite for perceived value, which is a multidimensional concept representing a “trade-off between benefits and sacrifices, as perceived by customers” [58] and which is also a prerequisite for competitiveness as well. If we transfer the concept of quality from the entrepreneurial level to the destination level, we can conclude that a destination that reflects overall quality is also competitive. Quality can thus be understood as “the ability to optimize the attractiveness of a destination’s resources in order to offer high-quality, unique, and destination-specific tourism services, resulting in effective and sustainable use of its resources” [59,60]. Morrison [61] argues that physical structures and their size are not as significant to visitors compared with their quality; the quality of services provided by the staff, including their hospitality, and the welcoming attitude of residents are also significant factors. Quality management therefore plays a crucial role in the development of a destination’s offer [61,62].

Competence is an important resource for determining competitive advantage; resource distinctiveness arises through the identification of a unique pattern of competences [63]. The quality of competitive advantage depends on the quality of interaction processes (coordination of resources and competences) and on the quality of resources and competences contributed by business partners [64,65]. By definition, competence (or competency) “is the ability to do something” and is “the quality of being competent”, with the primary focus being on competent individuals who possess the ability or capability to complete the task [66]. Competence can be categorized as: (1) individual competence that focuses on the personal and cognitive traits of competent managers or employees in relation to their job performance; (2) organizational competence that focuses on corporation-wide strategic competence and collective practices; and (3) comprehensive competence that integrates both individual and organizational strategic competences [67]. Therefore, “the factors governable by the organizations, which make them survive and succeed, are the competence factors—and of the whole of those factors from a work effort of the simplest floor person to the biggest technological breakthroughs and financing possibilities; everything within the boundaries of an organization that enables its performance, belongs to its competence” [68]. Because a destination, being a legal entity (a non-living thing), possesses organizational competences, it can also possess destination competences. Consequently, destination competences encompass everything within a destination’s boundaries that enables its performance and success. Based on this observation, we define destination competences in our model as everything within the boundaries of a destination that enables its performance and success, including: (1) destination resources (core and supporting resources), (2) gastronomic resources (restaurant quality and service quality), and (3) GDC (quality, innovativeness, creativity, sustainability, and local features).

Furthermore, Hjalager [69] argued that the destination serves as a repository of competence and knowledge, which is crucial for the development of products and services (i.e., the destination offer). Intellectual capital, being a set of intangible resources and capabilities comprising different categories of knowledge, contributes to a competitive advantage and consists of: (1) human capital (knowledge, experiences, skills, and motivation embedded in employees), (2) structural capital (methods, capabilities, routines, and procedures embedded in the organization), and (3) relational capital (capabilities, knowledge, and procedures embedded in the organization and arising from relationships with suppliers, customers, partners, and others) [70].

Destination competitiveness is a highly significant topic in tourism, and numerous studies have been conducted to study this element. A groundbreaking contribution is Ritchie and Crouch’s Conceptual model of destination competitiveness [71], which offers a comprehensive interpretation of destination competitiveness by asserting that a destination’s competitiveness depends on its ability to generate and/or increase tourism expenditure. Today, competition among destinations is no longer only focused “on the single aspects of the tourism product”; rather, it is viewed as an “integrated and compound” set of tourism services that form the destination offer [36,72]. Therefore, a destination that places a strong emphasis on gastronomic tourism with a high level of gastronomy can be referred to as a gastronomic destination.