What Is Gastronomy Tourism? Why Food Is Becoming a Destination
- Editorial Team
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
Author: Eat Well · Feel Well · Live Well Editorial Team
What shapes your choice of destination when you travel?
Perhaps it is the beauty of the landscape, the historic architecture, the hotel, or the climate. In recent years, however, another consideration has become increasingly important: what you can eat when you get there.
This is about more than simply trying a famous local dish once.
It means wandering through markets, visiting farms and wineries, and listening to the people who produce the region’s food. It is about discovering where the ingredients are grown and understanding why certain dishes have been prepared and passed down in that particular place for generations.
Gastronomy tourism is a way of travelling that uses food as a gateway into the daily life, culture, and identity of a region.
Food as a Gateway to Culture and Place
Traditionally, travellers would plan their itinerary around major sights and enjoy the local cuisine in between.
Today, however, food is increasingly becoming the reason for choosing a destination in the first place:
“I want to visit that town specifically to try this dish.”
“I am planning the entire trip around a visit to this winery.”
In other words, the culinary experience itself is becoming the destination.
According to research published by the European Travel Commission in 2026, gastronomy ranks among the main activities planned by long-haul travellers visiting Europe, following culture and history. The same research also found that food and drink account for the largest share of travellers’ spending during their trips.
This is not simply because travellers have more money to spend.
The study also indicates that rising costs and limited time are making more people cautious about long-haul travel. Even so, spending on food remains a priority.
Rather than spending indiscriminately, travellers appear to be choosing experiences that will stay with them long after the journey is over. Increasingly, one of those experiences is the food culture of a particular place.
What Is Gastronomy Tourism?
Gastronomy tourism is not simply about travelling from one famous restaurant to another.
UN Tourism describes gastronomy as something that extends far beyond food itself. It reflects a place’s culture, traditions, heritage, and communities. Connecting food with tourism can also help preserve regional culture while supporting local economic activity.
In practice, gastronomy tourism may include experiences such as:
exploring local markets and morning markets
visiting farms, ranches, and fishing harbours
touring wineries, breweries, and other producers
visiting cheese makers and bakeries
taking part in regional cooking classes
attending harvest celebrations and food festivals
hearing directly from producers and chefs about the origins of local ingredients
tasting home-style dishes that have been passed down through generations
Gastronomy tourism is not defined by fine dining alone.
Buying seasonal vegetables at a small market or ordering the food that local people eat every day in a village restaurant can be just as meaningful. Both offer a way to experience the food culture of a place from within.
Why Food-Centred Travel Is Gaining Attention Now
Travellers Are Seeking Experiences Rooted in Place
Information about famous attractions and restaurants is now readily available on a screen, without ever having to leave home.
As a result, travellers are placing greater value on experiences that can only be found by being physically present in a destination.
A European Travel Commission survey of 3,000 travellers found that interest in engaging with local culture, food, and traditions—and in choosing locally owned accommodation and businesses—had increased compared with the previous year. The survey also identified growing interest in less-visited destinations and experiences that bring travellers closer to the everyday life of local communities.
Rather than eating the same kinds of food wherever they go, travellers want to discover flavours that could only have emerged in that particular region.
Food offers a way not merely to observe a destination from the surface, but to step more deeply into the place itself.
Gastronomy Tourism Goes Hand in Hand with Slow Travel
Gastronomy tourism is less about fitting as many attractions as possible into a short itinerary and more about staying in one place long enough to experience its food culture.
It may mean waiting for the morning market to open, visiting a farm, or allowing time for a leisurely meal. Travellers might first see the landscape in which an ingredient is grown, then taste a dish prepared with that same ingredient. The pace of the journey naturally begins to slow.
Among long-haul travellers considering a trip to Europe in 2026, interest in slow travel rose from 22 per cent in 2025 to 26 per cent.
Travel patterns for spring and summer 2026 also suggest a shift away from rushing through several countries. Instead, more travellers are choosing to visit multiple towns within a single country and explore the destination in greater depth.
Building an itinerary around food reflects this broader change: away from journeys measured by the number of destinations visited, and towards travel that offers a deeper understanding of one particular place.
In the survey question asking travellers which activities they would like to experience in Europe, 26 per cent selected slow travel in 2026. This was four percentage points higher than in the previous year’s survey, when the corresponding figure was 22 per cent.
Supporting Local Culture and Industry
Visiting local markets, independently owned restaurants, and food producers can help direct travellers’ spending more closely into the communities they visit.
Behind a single dish lies the work of many people: farmers, fishers, livestock producers, chefs, food processors, and accommodation providers, among others.
UN Tourism notes that gastronomy tourism has the potential to create employment, encourage entrepreneurship, and support community development by connecting tourism with local products and cultural traditions.
However, an increase in visitor numbers does not automatically benefit the local community.
When travellers spend primarily with large businesses based outside the region, only a limited share of that money may remain in the destination. For this reason, enjoying gastronomy tourism also involves paying attention to who produces the food and who provides the experience.
Food Reveals the Meaning of a Landscape
One of the great attractions of gastronomy tourism is that it allows travellers to experience food and landscape as part of the same story.
Consider the Camargue in southern France.
Across this vast delta of the Rhône lie wetlands, salt marshes, farmland, and the Mediterranean coast. Over time, people have adapted to this distinctive natural environment through rice cultivation, salt production, and the raising of cattle and horses.
Camargue rice, fleur de sel, local beef, Mediterranean seafood, olive oil, and herbs all feature prominently in the region’s cuisine. Each dish carries traces of the local water, soil, climate, and the work of the people who live there.
It is possible to appreciate the flavour of a dish simply by ordering it in a restaurant.
Yet the same dish can take on an entirely different meaning after seeing the salt marshes and rice fields, and learning how local producers work within that landscape.
Why is rice grown here?
Why do salt and beef play such an important role in the region’s cooking?
When we understand the story behind the ingredients, a meal becomes more than an act of consumption. It becomes a way of understanding the land itself.
How to Make the Most of Gastronomy Tourism
There is no single prescribed way to experience gastronomy tourism.
A good place to begin is by looking beyond the best-known attractions and researching what is actually produced in the region you are planning to visit.
Learning about seasonal ingredients, market days, harvest periods, and local festivals can completely change the way you see a destination.
It is also worth resisting the temptation to fill the entire itinerary with famous restaurants.
Instead, combine visits to markets, farms, wineries, and small local eateries. Avoid scheduling every hour, and leave enough room to step into a place you happen to discover along the way.
It is also important to remember that something sold locally is not necessarily produced locally.
Checking where ingredients come from and who makes them—and choosing regional producers and independently owned businesses whenever possible—can help support the culture, skills, and livelihoods of the place you are visiting.
Food Is a Gateway to Understanding a Place
Gastronomy tourism is not an exclusive form of travel reserved for devoted food lovers.
Browsing the ingredients at a local market.
Tasting the dishes of the region.
Listening to the people who grow, produce, and prepare the food.
Each of these experiences offers a way into the history and everyday life of a place.
What matters is not how many attractions we manage to visit, but how deeply we are able to experience the destination itself.
The growing desire to make food a purpose of travel may reflect a broader shift in travellers’ values: away from simply consuming a destination, and towards engaging with it more thoughtfully and meaningfully.
Editor’s Note
What we eat while travelling has always been part of the pleasure of a journey. Today, however, more travellers are no longer simply adding meals to an itinerary. They are choosing destinations in order to experience the food culture of the place itself.
Walking through local markets, listening to producers, and tasting dishes that have been passed down through generations can reveal aspects of a region that famous landmarks alone cannot show: its everyday life, history, and relationship with the land.
This article explores why gastronomy tourism is attracting growing attention, alongside the rise of slow travel and a broader desire for more meaningful, locally rooted experiences.
