The Future of Food Tourism Goes Beyond the Restaurant Experience
Photo Credit: A cooking class led by chefs at the Zero George Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. Easton Porter Group / Eric Kelley
Skift Take
Food connects a traveler to a place in a way that's arguably closer and more engaging than anything else they could encounter. Confining a food tourist's dining experience to the walls of a restaurant isn't enough to make them feel like they got what they came for.
"Dining will be the last form of live entertainment."
This affirmation by Reserve's CEO Greg Hong last week at Skift Global Forum in Brooklyn represents the trend of experiential travelers engrossed with food and wanting to learn more about how their meals are prepared and where they come from. Visiting a winery and doing a tasting no longer whets travelers' appetites the way it once did. Now they want to meet with the wine grower and be personally shown around the vineyards, for example.
It's become a challenge to find a city, state, or region that hasn't branded itself as a food destination to some extent, and some studies have found one in two millennials consider themselves foodies, for example, according to Bob Williams, a marketing professor at Susquehanna University who studies food tourism and his wife Helena, co-founder of gastrogatherings.com, citing a journal paper he and Helena co-authored. There are, however, differences between travelers calling themselves fair-weat
