The Rise of Culinary Tourism – Part One
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APEX contributor Jordan Yerman explores the rise in culinary tourism in a four-part web series, released every Friday starting April 3, 2015. Look out for Part Two of the series “The New Food Cities: Building a Global Culinary Magnet” where Yerman reveals which cities are attracting traveling foodies.
Going down to the local pizza place no longer hits the spot. Instead, we’re hopping on a plane to get that next good-food fix.
Crank up the kitchen fan and unplug the smoke detector, because culinary tourism is even hotter than you think. According to Mandala Research, 51 percent of American leisure travelers now qualify as culinary tourists. (That’s up from 40 percent in 2006, itself a formidable number.)
In introducing its American Culinary Traveler 2013 report, Mandala says that over half of Americans who traveled for pleasure did so to learn about and experience the eating and drinking that goes on in New York or Istanbul or Paris or Rio. Mmmm, Rio…
You want numbers? The report has numbers. Thirty-nine million American leisure travelers choose a destination based on what their stomachs want, while another 35 million seek out culinary activities once a destination has been chosen.
So that’s… carry the one… 74 million American travelers who want to experience new places through taste.
In the awesomely-named “A Flash of Culinary Tourism: Understanding the Influences of Online Food Photography on People’s Travel Planning Process on Flickr,” researchers from the University of Florida and Clemson University found that not just food, but food photography was a profound travel motivator.
Video, too:
The report found that 73.8 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I like to first decide the destination for a vacation, and then look for local food and restaurants”; 62.7 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I like to go to new places to try some new food and take pictures of them.”
While travelers are keen on food, foodies are just as keen on traveling. Over 54% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “food pictures motivate me to go to new places”; 46.9 percent of the respondents indicated that they would look at food pictures when planning a trip; 46.8 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “if I know of new places through food pictures, I will go there and try the food”; and 26.2 percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I like to look up information on some new food and then choose a vacation destination where I can find the food.”
And, yes, “culinary activity” includes wine and beer. Bonjour, Pacific Northwest!
I Came. I Saw. I Devoured.
Not all culinary travelers are the same, though. There are varying degrees of commitment. At the top we find what Mandala has dubbed the Deliberate Culinary Traveler. This classification was given to survey respondents who named cooking and eating as a key reason for taking a long journey.
If you love green curry so much you flew to Thailand to learn how to make it yourself, then guess what? You’re a Deliberate Culinary Traveler.
Don’t Mind If I Do!
Next we find the Opportunistic Culinary Traveler. This breed of food tourist says that culinary activities help her decide where to go during those precious, precious vacation days.
If you ever found yourself deciding between a trip to Chicago and a trip to New York, and your abiding love of deep dish pizza steered you toward the Windy City, then congratulations: You’re an Opportunistic Culinary Traveler.
What an Incredible New Taste You’ve Discovered!
Then there’s the Accidental Culinary Traveler. This isn’t a backpacker who slip, falls and lands in a bowl of bibimbap. No, the Accidental Culinary Traveler has journeyed to a new and distant land for any number of other reasons, and, according to Mandala, “participated in culinary activities simply because they were there.”
If you tramped around Europe last summer, but your only Instagrams were of new types of pastry you found downstairs from your hostel or hotel, then you just may be an Accidental Culinary Traveler.
Americans are only the tip of the iceberg, which is floating in a gigantic glass of exotic sangria. What we eat determines where we point our feet, and as we’ll see in next week’s instalment of the series, airlines and tourist boards are taking notice.
What kind of culinary traveler are you?