Do tourists who visit Malta expect traditional local food tasting to be included in guided tours, or is it just a nice add on?

Abstract

The concept of ‘food, or culinary, tourism’, defined by the World Food Travel Association as “the act of travelling for a taste of place in order to get a sense of place” (www. worldfoodtravel.org) is undoubtedly a growing part of the global tourism story. This was echoed by Carmina Fandos Herrera, a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Zaragoza, in the UNWTO Global report on Food Tourism, when she said that ‘Gastronomic tourism is an emerging phenomenon that is being developed as a new tourism product due, inter alia, to the fact that according to the specialized literature (among others, Quan and Wang, 2004) over a third of tourist spending is devoted to food. Therefore, the cuisine of the destination is an aspect of utmost importance in the quality of the holiday experience“. [excerpt]