Search

This paper focuses on the Kras/Carso Food Tour to present the challenges of developing a luxury tourism product. The tour's design followed the current strategy of the Slovenian Tourist Board, which defines specific criteria for a luxury experience. Contextualized by the experiential trends in tourism, the paper juxtaposes the bottom-up and top-down perspectives on luxury experiences. The authors argue that mediation by experts familiar with academic discourses and local culture is beneficial for the development of a successful tourism product. The study contributes to the debates on luxury tourism, which have neglected bottom-up perceptions in tourist discourse and overlooked the dilemmas people face when »luxurifying« their traditions and heritage practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on five culinary events on Slovenia's Karst Plateau (Kras). It presents visitors' motives for attending these events, their satisfaction with them, and their views on sustainability. These traditional culinary events, which take place in the same gastronomic region, differ in their scale, theme, character, and history. A survey was conducted among 244 visitors, approximately 50% of whom had a university degree. The most important motives for their visit include local cuisine; experiencing something new, different, or special; and exploring natural heritage and especially cultural heritage. Visitor satisfaction is the greatest at boutique culinary events, where the main theme is highlighted more strongly than at large-scale culinary events. The main challenge in terms of the sustainability of culinary events is public transport access to the venues. Significant progress would be made by reducing the amount of disposable packaging made from non-sustainable materials. The key to successful culinary events is high-quality services and ingredients, where the word local is key. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]