Abstract
Cheese tasting attracts crowds of visitors to areas in countries such as France, Italy, Spain, and New Zealand, distinguishing cheese tourism as an individual tourism direction within food (gastronomic, culinary) tourism. Internationally known, but locally specific and artisanal cheese is thought to be the main resource. Its exploitation by the tourism industry contributes to sustainability, supporting rural lifestyles and facilitating the integration of rural traditions, heritage, and natural landscapes. In Russia, cheese production is concentrated in regions including Altay, Voronezh, and Moscow. The state of tourist activities favors the use of cheese as a valuable tourism resource. Importantly, this resource is linked to the production of common sorts of cheese in big (industry-scale) amounts and the creation of cheese-related attractions like cheese museums. Cheese festivals also take place locally. A comparison to the European experience of cheese tourism reveals significant peculiarities of this activity in Russia and, particularly, a bigger relevance to industrial tourism than to food and rural tourism. Realization of only part of the opportunities linked to cheese tourism presents challenges regarding environmental and socioeconomical sustainability.
Highlights
Food is an important driver of the tourism industry, and food tourism sensu lato has become well established in recent decades
De Jong and Varley [19] have demonstrated how food festivals contribute to social sustainability under the influence of such factors as social capital and power relations
The objective of the present study is to provide the first evidence of cheese as a valuable resource of tourism in some regions of Russia
Summary
Food is an important driver of the tourism industry, and food (gastronomic, culinary) tourism sensu lato has become well established in recent decades. Much attention has been paid recently to sustainability issues in tourism [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. This broad topic has various aspects, including sustainable tourism growth, tourism’s contribution to environmental/socioeconomical sustainability, and tourism industry dependence on local/regional sustainable development. De Jong and Varley [19] have demonstrated how food festivals contribute to social sustainability under the influence of such factors as social capital and power relations. Zhang et al [21] have analyzed the relevance of food tourism to sustainable rural development in the Guangdong Province of China, and they have stressed the importance of tourists’ perception of the authenticity of local food
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