The term "culinary tourism" was introduced by L. Long in 1998, as a method of experiencing other cultures through food. Despite of its many definitions, culinary tourism (or food tourism) can undoubtedly be regarded as a form of cultural tourism (Fig. 3). A. Kowalczyk (2008) points out three reasons for including food tourism in cultural tourism. First, culinary traditions and foodways are integrally related to cultural traditions. Second, culinary tourists get to know other cultures through the consumption of new dishes, ways of serving them, and a broadly defined eating culture. Third, during the „culinary travels”, tourists visit new places, meet their inhabitants, visit places of interest, and get to know local history and traditions. Food tourism is not a new phenomenon. Its origins go back to the Grand Tour travels (17th - 19th c.), although this form of travel involved a small number of tourists and was limited mainly to wine tourism. Nowadays, we can note three aspects which add new dimensions to food tourism, namely: - a growing number of participants in culinary travels (15% of the total number of tourists) and a significant variety of their motivations and expectations; - a significant variety of tourist attractions on offer, both in their thematic aspects (such as wine tourism, beer tourism, Thai cuisine, cuisine of the Podlasie region, and so on), as well as formal ones (such as restaurants, vineyards, breweries, culinary routes, culinary festivals, and so on); - institutionalisation and formalisation of culinary tourism, which results from its growing popularity and from its being regarded as a factor in development and promotion of selected towns or regions. Food tourism is therefore regarded as a means of experiencing regions and/or countries, but gradually, it is also treated as an element of regional development. Its importance is therefore defined not only in its cultural, but also in its economic (commercial) dimension.
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