Skift Take
Among the big food tourism trends in 2016, culinary travelers want hyper-local cuisine, cultural context, pop-up restaurants, and hands-on food experiences.
Late last month we launched a new report in our Skift Trends Reports service, Food Tourism Strategies to Drive Destination Spending.
The report was the product of research, surveys, and multiple interviews with leaders and emerging trendsetters in culinary travel. Some of this, including the insight below, did not make it into the final report.
Get the full report here.
The biggest trend in culinary travel today is the growing diversity of food tourist profiles, and how travel companies are adapting to that increasing segmentation.
A male Baby Boomer foraging for truffles in Provence has a different foodie profile than a Millennial woman navigating the Denver Beer Trail, or a Gen X family with two kids exploring Singapore's hawker street food stalls.
All of them, however, share the same passion for locally contextual dining experiences, and they're willing to spend extra dollars on travel companies catering to their personal tastes. So tour operators today are busy trying to identify and define tomorrow's emerging food tourists and their individual preferences.
In our trend report survey of more than 2,000 travelers, interest in gourmet food and wine ranked far below chef-driven “gastropub” cuisine and experiential activities such as farmer’s markets, food festivals, and food/beverage tours. "Trendy, creative, experimental" dining is also high in demand.
Meanwhile, according to the World Food Travel Association (WFTA), there's growing interest among food tourists in segments such as novice, social, organic, localist, budget, and adventure food tourism. All told, the WFTA lists 14 food tourism segments
