Increasingly in search of innovative and personalised experiences, today also phygital. An opportunity for territories to restart post-Covid.
Tourists are looking for variety, they are no longer satisfied with traditional tasting proposals, but want to experience local food and wine in all its facets according to their own tastes and needs.
“About 50% of food and wine travel enthusiasts are ‘omnivores’: during their holidays they want to enjoy a varied set of enriching experiences and food and wine, which is in itself multisensory, emotional and cultural, best meets their needs,” says Roberta Garibaldi, university lecturer in tourism management and president of the Italian Association of Food and Wine Tourism. “These tourists are therefore open to exploring different forms of enjoyment, and this desire must be a stimulus for destinations to expand and enrich their offerings, diversifying and integrating them. Especially at a time like the present, where careful planning of strategies can create a competitive advantage in the coming months”.
Psycho-culinary profiles are the set of expectations, tastes and personal needs towards food and wine proposals when travelling. Every tourist tends to identify with a predominant profile, and in 43% of cases this is the eclectic, i.e. those who make the variety of the offer an essential prerogative in their travels.
This profile is the most common among travellers from Canada, the United States, Mexico, China and the United Kingdom, and only among the French does the theme of authenticity prevail.
The eclectic profile is cross-generational, with 53% of Boomers, 45% of Generation X, 38% of Millennials and 37% of Generation Z, and cross-gender, with 42% of women and 41% of men.
This desire to seek out and enjoy different food and wine experiences is also confirmed by actual behaviour: foreign tourists have participated in an average of 3.9 different types of proposal during their trips in the last two years, a figure that rises to 4.7 considering those who travelled with food and wine as their primary motivation.
