A land of cheese: from food innovation to tourism development in rural Catalonia

ABSTRACT

Cheese recently acquired a major role as a tourist attraction, cheese tourism appearing in parallel to the increasing regional impact of food tourism practices. As a means of valuing local produce, recovering cultural heritage and appreciating natural landscapes, cheese making became a significant activity for community development, diversification and innovation in rural areas. Here, tourism is an innovation process that allows the economic survival of local small agri-food companies. Drawing from phenomenological ethnographic fieldwork based on participatory observation, this research discusses the mutual relations between the innovative processes of artisanal cheese sector and food tourism in rural Catalonia. Results provide evidence on how innovation occurs through milk and cheese production in rural environments as, from their role as primary economic activities, they progressively became a crucial actor within the tourism industry. This research contributes to the understanding of the processes of diversification and innovation in rural and natural environments, based on the specific case of artisanal cheese making in the Catalan Pyrenees. In this sense, gastronomic tourism practices confirm the entrepreneurial role of local producers in economic and tourist development.

KEYWORDS:

• Cheese tourism
• regional development
• rural tourism
• Spain

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesc Fusté-Forné

Francesc Fusté-Forné is Professor and Researcher at the University of Girona. His research is focused on rural and food tourism, and food media. Particularly, he has studied the food tourism phenomenon by bringing connections between authenticity, food heritages, landscapes and landscapers, regional development, rural activities, and tourist experiences.

Lluis Mundet i Cerdan

Lluis Mundet i Cerdan is Associate Professor and member of the Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory in Tourism (LMRT) at the Faculty of Tourism of the University of Girona. He’s currently also the coordinator of the PhD Programme in Tourism. His research interests center on culture, gastronomy and tourism.