Resumen de Gastronomy tourism experiences: the cooking classes of Cinque Terre
Jithendran Kokkranikal, Elisa Carabelli
Gastronomy tourism is a niche area of heritage tourism and attending cooking classes to learn about and engage in food preparation is a popular form of gastronomy tourism. Many cooking schools have come up in tourist destinations all over the world in many forms such as part of homestay accommodation, home-based cooking classes, professional culinary schools and small restaurants offering cooking lessons along with dining. This study aims to explore tourists’ experiences related to cooking classes in Cinque Terre using the experiential framework proposed by Kim, Ritchie and McCormick in their article“Development of a scale to measure memorable tourism experiences”published in Journal of Travel Research 51(1). A content analysis of the online reviews of the Cinque Terre Cooking Schools on TripAdvisor was carried out using the aforementioned experiential framework. Findings indicate that four of the dimensions of the tourist experience framework were considered significant by the participants of the cooking classes, namely involvement, hedonism, local culture and knowledge and that often these dimensions overlap creating inextricable and complex bonds between them. The study contributes to the literature on third-generation gastronomy tourism experiences,focusing on tourists’ participation in interactive foodscapes in cooking classes in Cinque Terre.
