This study meticulously explores the intricate interplay between sustainable tourism and the preservation of cultural heritage, focusing on how tourism practices can foster the protection and revitalization of cultural and ethnic traditions within diverse communities in Thanh Hoa province, Vietnam (Pan et al., 2018). The research problem centers on understanding how sustainable tourism contributes to cultural preservation and the economic upliftment of ethnic minority groups. The research aims to unveil how sustainable tourism can act as a catalyst for cultural exchange, economic development, and the safeguarding of natural and cultural assets, with a particular emphasis on the involvement and empowerment of ethnic minority communities in the tourism development process (Datta et al., 2015). Employing multivariate linear regression as its primary research method, the study rigorously analyzes case studies to draw correlations between sustainable tourism activities and their impacts on cultural preservation. The main findings reveal that sustainable tourism practices significantly contribute to protecting cultural heritage, enhancing community participation, and fostering responsible tourism policies. These practices not only support the economic sustainability of ethnic minority groups but also ensure the conservation of their unique cultural identities. The implications of this research are profound, offering valuable insights for policymakers and tourism practitioners aiming to harmonize cultural heritage conservation with community well-being. By advocating for the integration of community perspectives into tourism planning and policy formulation, this study underscores the potential of sustainable tourism to serve as a powerful tool for cultural and economic revitalization, highlighting its importance in the broader context of cultural heritage management and sustainable development (Gould, 2018).

Gastronomy has been recognized as a source of place-based advantage for destination differentiation and territorial development. Culinary inventories are commonly used tools for documentation and planning purposes but often remain descriptive in nature and do not readily support spatial tourism analysis. This research created a Food Heritage Spatial Framework for Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, by converting a previously compiled inventory of 122 recorded culinary specialties into an analytically usable spatial database. Culinary specialties were coded based on seven traits, including ingredient base, cultural derivation, processing style, food type, cultural significance, peak season, and ecological region, then mapped using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and clustered using mixed-attribute cluster analysis. Cluster analysis was performed using Gower dissimilarity to accommodate mixed data types, followed by Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) and hierarchical clustering. Validity of clusters was determined using silhouette analysis. Spatial differentiation of cuisine revealed three ecological-zone patterns distributed across mountainous–midland (56 specialties; 45.9%), river delta–lowland (40; 32.8%), and coastal–estuarine (26; 21.3%) ecological regions. Cluster analysis revealed four key culinary strategy groups: Royal Heritage, Ethno-Ecological, Urban Gastronomy, and Marine Gastronomy, with an overall average silhouette width of 0.48. Findings illustrated how Thanh Hoa’s existing culinary geography represents differences in ecology as well as historical associations, local knowledge systems, processing styles and urban functions. These spatial patterns and identified culinary groups were mapped as potential gastronomic tourism itineraries and described within an integrated value-chain framework. This spatially derived gastronomy framework provides a planning basis that may support spatially informed gastronomic tourism development by linking culinary heritage with local communities, producers, destination characteristics, and regional development priorities. The study demonstrates how a descriptive culinary inventory can be transformed into a spatially organized and analytically usable planning framework that may support future sustainable gastronomic tourism planning.