Master's thesis tourism and Local Food and Beverages

2.2.2 Food Tourism: 
As Hall & Sharples ( 2003) explain, while defining food tourism, one should take into 
account the difference between tourists who consume food only as part of their travel 
experience and those whose activities, behaviors and, even destination selection is oriented 
by an interest in food. The fact that food is an important part of regional identity and food 
production does have a huge impact on the landscape is undeniable but we should also be 
cognizant of the fact that it is very hard to draw a line between „foodscape
‟
and broader 
concerns surrounding agricultural areas, which are by nature landscapes of food production. 
It does not need mentioning that there are undoubtedly a number of places which, by 
possessing the privilege of their intensity of use for food production such as added-value 
processing and production and their accessibility for visitors including the availability of 
markets, farmer direct purchasing opportunities and restaurants and accommodation, are 
distinctive places of consumption for food tourists. This does not mean, however, that local 
production is consumed only in places far from the production place; for one of the great 
opportunities offered by food tourism is the capacity to export the intended food to the places 
from which the visitors come from. Therefore, food intended in food tourism is the direct 
production of the local place and is intended to be consumed in its place of production. It is 
exactly for this reason that food tourism is capable of providing so much potential to 
reinforce local economies, encourage the conservation of food and biodiversity, and help 
sustain local identities. 
2.2.3 Motivation: 
People are likely to travel for different reasons, and the motivational factors involved in 
motivating the tourists are by far numerous. The range of wants expressed by consumers is 
vast; nevertheless many studies have tried to make this picture look as simple as possible by 
looking at needs that are expressed through individual wants; that is why so many studies 
have used Marlow
‟s
hierarchy of needs as their basis. Fodness (1994) &Goossens as cited in 
8 

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Chapter 2. Literature Review 
Tikkanen (2007) believes, however, that motivation as a research area for tourism is not that 
much worked upon and thus it should still be worked upon both conceptually and 
empirically. Holloway, 1998 as cited in Tikkanen (2007) thinks that the process which is in 
charge of translating a need into the motivation to visit a particular destination or to 
undertake a specific activity is quite complex and it is this same process that brings about a 
motivation to visit a desired place. He also claims that push factors are useful for the purpose 
of explaining the desire to go on a vacation and these push factors are the same needs, drives, 
and motives which operate in the consumer
‟
s dispositions.