The Tourists’ Gastronomic Experience: An embodied and spatial approach

Gastronomic research within the field of tourism and hospitality from a travelers’ perspective is limited. This chapter reviews the literature on tourist experience that is predominantly from a mind-focused perspective. A phenomenological perspective on gastronomic tourism fully recognizes that macro-level cultures have an impact on micro-level tourist’s perceptions of food through the tourist body. The chapter provides an overview of how the concept of the tourist experience has been studied using a sociological and psychological perspective. An embodied and spatial approach to gastronomic tourist experience adds to current knowledge on such experience investigated from macro and micro level perspectives. Experiences are seen as being formed within the individual by means of psychological processes. With reference to the gastronomic tourism literature, majority of the current studies have followed the micro-oriented framework. The chapter describes embodied and spatial approach using existential phenomenology as a method. It concludes by providing an illustrative example drawing from the tourists’ gastronomic context.