📌 Culinary Tourism 2025 From Street Food to Immersive Dining

Culinary tourism is transforming travel, discover how food boosts bookings, spend, and loyalty, and how operators can capture this growing demand.

🌞 Welcome To This Week's Newsletter

More than half of travellers across generations now prioritise food when planning trips, while 81% actively look forward to culinary adventures abroad (Bedsonline).

Culinary tourism is now valued at over $1.06 trillion and continues to expand at a double-digit growth rate (The Business Research Company, 2025). These are customers for whom food and drink are the primary focus and goal of the journey. Unlike traditional tourists who treat dining as an add-on, this segment chooses destinations, plans itineraries, and allocates budgets around food experiences.

Understanding who these travellers are, across demographics, psychographic drivers, destination choices and behavioural patterns, is essential for hospitality operators looking to attract high-value guests who spend more, stay longer, and return for repeat experiences.

📄 On the Menu this week

• Everything You Need to Know About Culinary Tourists

• Creating & Capturing Culinary Demand

• 🔒 How to Market to Culinary Tourists

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🍓 Culinary Tourists

Culinary tourists don’t just dine, they drive ADR, F&B revenue, and loyalty. When travellers measure a trip by the dishes they’ve tried rather than the sights they’ve seen, operators face a clear choice: show up in the food journey or lose the booking entirely.

50% of global travellers now reserve restaurants before booking flights, and nearly 1 in 5 leisure travellers plan entire trips around specific restaurants or food experiences.

• Millennials are the largest segment of culinary tourists, accounting for around 40% of the market. Their appetite for immersive, authentic, and shareable experiences positions them as the driving force behind demand.

• Gen Z is close behind, with strong preferences for sustainable and ethical food experiences, and a heavy reliance on digital discovery.

• Gen X remains a steady participant, often drawn to wine regions, food festivals, and established gastronomic hubs.

• Meanwhile, Gen Alpha, although still emerging as travellers, is beginning to influence family travel choices, particularly when it comes to interactive and educational food activities.

“Marriott International’s research calls luxury culinary tourism the leading driver of travel, with 88% of affluent travellers saying discovering new foods is important or very important when choosing a destination.”

🍴 Gastro-Psychographic Segments

Demographics can no longer alone explain how travellers engage with food. Age or income brackets are less predictive than the motivations behind dining choices. Culinary tourists can be grouped into four core segments:

• Escapists, who seek emotional reset and well-being through food, gravitate towards wellness retreats and farm-to-table dining, often influenced by Pinterest or long-form content around mindful travel.

• Prestige Seekers, who pursue status-led dining and exclusive access, cluster around Michelin-starred destinations and high-spend tasting menus, which are often discovered through Instagram and luxury platforms.

• Explorers, who crave novelty, the unusual, and narrative-rich meals, they are more likely to chase street food, underground dining, or culinary pop-ups, find inspiration on TikTok and other short-form video platforms.

• Connectors, who are drawn to nostalgia, heritage, or diaspora ties. They invest in heritage restaurants, local festivals, and comfort-led menus, responding well to email loyalty campaigns and cultural storytelling.

For operators, understanding these psychographics is crucial: culinary tourism is no longer a single market, but rather a complex array of overlapping micro-motivations.

🔒 Want to See How Each Segment Books, Plans, and Buys?

In the VIP Lounge you’ll find full buyer journey tables for Escapists, Prestige Seekers, Explorers, and Connectors, showing the exact platforms, messages, and KPIs that move each group from dreaming to booking. It’s the playbook you can copy straight into your next campaign.

✈️ Where Are They Going?

Beyond the established icons, a new wave of destinations is shaping the global culinary map.

1. Italy remains a global leader, thanks to its iconic dishes and rich culinary heritage.

2. New Zealand: Recognised as a rising culinary destination, blending local produce and innovation.

3. Japan: World-class sushi, street food, and fusion cuisines attract international visitors.

4. Peru: Lima is a hub for sea-to-table and indigenous-inspired innovation.

5. San Sebastián (Spain): Consistently rated among the world’s most celebrated gastronomic cities.

6. Bangkok (Thailand): Rapidly gaining prestige with a surge of fine-dining restaurants.

7. Lyon (France): France’s gastronomic capital, famed for heritage flavours and bouchons.

8. New Orleans (USA): Food is the centrepiece of the itinerary, featuring Creole, Cajun, and fusion traditions.

9. Marrakech (Morocco): Street markets and traditional riads offer an immersive experience of food and culture.

10. Glasgow (Scotland): Emerging as a foodie hotspot with diverse cuisines and a growing global reputation.

Alongside these headline destinations, several emerging players are reshaping the culinary landscape, each offering distinct flavours and narratives that are beginning to capture global attention.

Philippines
The Philippines is actively positioning itself as a food-first destination. A government-backed roadmap aims to establish the country as a top culinary tourism hub by 2029, focusing on regional food circuits, market tours, and storytelling centred around local produce. From Ilocos empanadas to Bicol’s fiery curries, each province offers distinct flavours. Tourism campaigns now lean on food narratives as strongly as beaches, signalling a strategic shift toward gastronomy.

Regional Japan
While Tokyo and Osaka dominate headlines, Japan’s culinary pull increasingly comes from its regions. Travellers are seeking sushi in small fishing towns, traditional kaiseki in Kyoto prefectures, and sake breweries in Niigata. Off-the-beaten-path destinations are leveraging UNESCO food heritage, seasonal festivals, and immersive dining to draw visitors looking for authenticity that metropolitan hubs cannot replicate.

Peru
Peru’s culinary capital, Lima, is world-famous, but the country’s depth extends far beyond the city. The Sacred Valley and Cusco offer Andean ingredients reimagined in modern kitchens, while Arequipa is earning acclaim for picanterías and regional spice traditions. The growth of sea-to-table cevicherías and Amazonian gastronomy reinforces Peru’s role as South America’s most influential culinary destination.

Mexico
Mexico’s culinary tourism is being reshaped by artisanal mezcal routes, corn heritage festivals, and regional dishes that carry cultural symbolism. Oaxaca has emerged as a magnet for travellers seeking mole traditions, food markets, and mezcal tastings. Beyond tacos and tequila, Mexico’s narrative is increasingly about terroir, indigenous roots, and sustainable production, creating a draw for both prestige travellers and grassroots explorers.

Georgia
Georgia has quietly transformed into a heavyweight of food travel, with its ancient qvevri wine-making recognised by UNESCO and dishes like khachapuri and khinkali gaining international attention. Wine trails in Kakheti and immersive cooking classes are positioning the country as “Little Tuscany,” but with a uniquely Georgian flavour.

South Korea
South Korea’s culinary profile is surging, fuelled by the global wave of K-culture. From temple food in the mountains to Seoul’s neon-lit street food alleys, the country blends heritage and modernity. Government support has amplified culinary storytelling, with kimchi, fermented soy, and contemporary Korean fine dining becoming magnets for both Gen Z explorers and luxury travellers.

Even if your venue isn’t in a headline food destination, the lesson is clear: travellers choose places that tell a story through flavour. Package your own local ingredients, traditions, and food culture with the same pride, and you can capture the same demand without needing a global postcode.

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🥣 What Customers Want

Global surveys keep pointing to the same truth: food is the number one experience travellers seek. It cuts across age, income, and geography, making it one of the most reliable drivers of demand in hospitality today.

In 2024, Hilton surveyed 10,000 Millennial, Gen Z, Gen X, and Baby Boomer travellers from nine different countries. It found that culinary experiences, or gastrotourism, were the top priority for over half of travellers of all generations.

Zooming in further, American Express asked travellers what excites them most about food abroad. The results highlight not just a love of dining, but the breadth of experiences people now expect to be built into their trips.

An American Express survey found that 81% of travellers look forward to food experiences when abroad, with the highest interest in:

• discovering the local restaurant scene (54%)

• food festivals (46%)

• local food tours (41%)

• wine tastings (39%)

• dining with live entertainment (38%)

• brewery tours (34%)

• chef tasting menus (31%)

• cooking classes (22%)

Operators are already building food into every package and promotion. If you want your venue to compete, you need to do the same. Here’s how.