Gastronomic or culinary tourism by The International Kitchen® for example is a concept that is developing massively. This is also the case for wine tourism. Why? Because it’s a relevant way to meet other cultures. Because gastronomy and the land are an integral part of the history of a country, you can also discover a place by savoring its products. This new form of tourism invites professionals to find relevant solutions to attract curious and gourmet visitors.

What Is Culinary Tourism? 

We associate the two terms perfectly; it is quite easy to understand the purpose of this way of discovering a country. However, there are a thousand ways to get to know the gastronomic traditions of a country. For tourists who have left to visit Asia, we immediately imagine street restaurants where they can taste spring rolls and chicken skewers with spices. This is not our major argument if the food truck is developing in some countries. When foreign tourists come to France, we offer them two ways to understand our history better.

The first, quite traditional, is to welcome them to our many restaurants. Starred establishments,  Italy Food Tours 2023  for example or specialists in bistronomy, the restaurants are taken by storm by foreigners. But we offer another way of doing culinary tourism: meeting local producers. While some stroll through our beautiful markets, others go directly to the farm to find out how cheese, charcuterie, and wine are produced. Visit the farm, short course, tasting, everything is done to make you want to buy.

In concrete terms, there are as many ways of doing culinary or wine tourism as there are tourists. There are many activities:

• Eating with the locals
• Go to the restaurant
• Visit a farm, a distillery, a brewery
• Taking cooking classes, there are no limits to this travel trend

The culinary tourism trend in a few figures

In France, for instance, around 13 million tourists say they practice gastronomic tourism, and consumers want to be more and more responsible in the way they consume:

77% of French people would like more local, organic, homemade products on the menu. 

87% of respondents say it is important to consume environmentally friendly products

The French who buy local products are overwhelmingly convinced that this way of consuming makes it possible to run the local economy (97%). 

This interest in local products also aligns with their desire for the “real”: 81% of French people today feel a need to return to nature and essential things. 

In France, for example, consumers want to be more responsible. About 80% of French people think that eating locally reduces the environmental impact. If this influences their daily life, this idea is always in their minds when they vacation. It is even more and more present. How many French people who never go to the market during the year go for a walk in the summer in search of local products? Bringing back sausage from Vire, duck confit from the Dordogne, and Tomme cheese from Savoie is the ambition of many tourists who take advantage of their tourist activities to take the time to get their food at the source.

James Montano