Enhancing the Food Safety in the Tourism Sector - The Case of Macedonia

This paper underlines the important interconnection between tourism and food safety since the food has the key role in the tourists’ travel decisions. The paper deals with the food safety in tourism sector and presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis of law regulation on food safety and the factors of food safety standards applied in tourism establishments in Macedonia especially in the hospitality sector as part of it. Its eff ectiveness fully relies upon the relevant HACCP knowledge and skills, as well as upon other standards and good practices, management commitment and understanding of HACCP along with changes in attitude and organizational structure, thus all requiring adequate training to overcome barriers related to human resources. The survey points out that the creation of a profi table hospitality industry is largely dependent on compliance with practical and sustainable food safety systems by all participants in the tourism, integrating food safety into the national tourism and food safety development policy and discusses the challenges and recommends solutions as guidelines in which Macedonia can develop policy and target initiatives to strengthen food safety, especially in the small and medium sized tourism business