Overview of Course

Countries such as France, Spain, and Japan have long been destinations for culinary tourists. Other destination regions around the world have begun to realize the importance of local cuisine in attracting tourists seeking authentic, distinctive food experiences as well as in generating revenues given that a large percentage of tourists’ expenditures goes for food and beverages. Culinary tourism’s integration of food, culture, and the environment can also help keep the land in agriculture and spur local business development. This course will provide students with an understanding of this tourism market that is important globally and in the SAS countries visited as well as an understanding of the culinary tourists/‘foodies’. Contexts and forces driving the culinary tourism phenomenon, motivations of foodies, policies and planning for culinary tourism, culinary tourism destination development, events for foodies, marketing of culinary tourism, and impacts of culinary tourism will be explored using the various SAS countries as case studies.