‘Still hungry, not enough’: the past, present, and future of food tourism scholarship

This paper provides a state-of-the-art critical review of past and current food tourism scholarship and offers key insights and directions to establish a more comprehensive perspective on the field. The food tourism scholarship evolved, transformed, and progressed from earlier intellectual discussions and scholarly discourses on ‘food in tourism’. Through a rapid transition from ‘food in tourism’ to ‘food for tourism’ and ‘tourism for food’ as the current status quo, this paper proposes four directions for future food tourism research. These are: the application of contextualism philosophy with particular attention to the localities and peculiarities of emerging and/or new food tourism geographies, the accumulated experiences of food tourists in a holistic manner from a food cultural capital perspective, the alternative and sustainable foods and foodways regarding ongoing discourses of overtourism and degrowth, and the hypermobility concept of food travel and tourism. As such, the future of research directions, perspectives, issues, and concerns are plural and multifaceted.