More and more tourists are showing interest in local cuisine of travel destinations. While eating authentic food at local restaurants has become quite common while traveling, some tourists go even further and attend local cooking classes. They dirty their hands and learn to prepare local dishes with fellow travelers and then share the meal when the cost of doing so is easily 3-4 times of the price of eating at a nice local restaurant. Why are the individuals taking this trouble while they travel in a foreign country?
Shuyue Huang (Hospitality and Tourism, Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax), a former Lang Ph D student, and I are exploring diverse motives of tourists’ attending local cooking classes. We believe that this project will shed insight as to why some consumers are willing to pay a lot of money on creative activities involving their active participation. This type of service seems to offer valuable experience compared to buying a tangible product or intangible services that consumers passively receive.