Gastronomy: an essential ingredient in tourism production and consumption?

As competition between tourism destinations increases, local culture is becoming an increasingly valuable source of new products and activities to attract and amuse tourists. Gastronomy has a particularly important role to play in this, not only because food is central to the tourist experience, but also because gastronomy has become a significant source of identity formation in postmodern societies. More and more, ‘we are what we eat’, not just in the physical sense, but also because we identify with certain types of cuisine that we encounter on holiday.