Why do people travel in Italy?

The Italian Enogastronomic tourism is attracting a lot of tourist in the last few years. What are the main reasons?  Before I talked about the four motivator categories. As regard the physical motivators, the push factors refer to refresh their body and mind, to limit the daily stress, to take part in sport activities and last but not least for a sense of well-being. All this elements have to be associated with the experience to taste new food. To eat food, in this context, means to live different actions such as smell, taste and sight.

Secondly, the cultural motivators can be analysed in two different point of view: the first one concerns the servicescape, the music, the food, the dance and the lifestyle; on the other hand we could associate the action to eat in a destination with the sense of adventure to know different culture in terms of cultural activities. As regard this last aspect, Italy is a good example about how the experience of tasting new food could be associated  with the different traditions of each region. In fact tourist could find, in some period of the year (Christmas  or Easter) a special food offer, and each meal implies his history, about how and why this food was cooked in the past.

After, we could find the interpersonal motivators and they show the reason why tourists want to socialize with other people.

The last one are status and prestige motivators and they are referred to the personal desire to communicate other people the level of prestige and richness they have and also their power in the society. This motivators could be associated with the self-actualization needs (Maslow, 1954). From this point of view, Italy is the perfect destination, because of the wide range of proposals.

Indeed, the five-star restaurant in Italy can satisfy a very rich market target with the best quality of food and beverage.

From this point of view, the experience to eating out nice food in a nice place can be recognized as means to be distinguished from others in terms of social status. (Fields, 2002)

References

Fields, K. (2002). Demand for the gastronomy tourism product: Motivational factors. In: AM Hjalager & G. Richards (Eds), Tourism and Gastronomy (pp. 36–50). London: Routledge

Maslow A. (1954).Motivation and personality. Harper and Row New York, New York 1954 pg 92