The Future Food Tourist

Abstract

This chapter seeks to answer the question of how food tourists will be in the future based on technology and digitalisation. Therefore, two future food tourist scenarios are proposed: realistic and utopian. More specifically, considering the developing technology, from a realistic perspective, future food tourists are evaluated according to their experiences (virtual food experiences, personalised and hyper-personalised food experiences, interactive tech-based food experiences, and sensory food experiences), information sources and communication, tendencies (seeking transparency and traceability in the food supply chain and sustainability-oriented), and payments. However, a utopian future food tourist was also provided as the second future food tourist scenario. In this scenario, the dimensions of future food tourists include instantaneous food travel thanks to teleportation, brain-computer interface-based food experiences, lab-grown food experiences, and intergalactic food tourism. Since this is the first study providing future food tourist scenarios, it plays a guidance role for service providers and launches a scholarly debate in food tourism literature. © 2025 Francesc Fusté-Forné and Erik Wolf.