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Luxury food tour: Perspectives and dilemmas on the "luxurification" of local culture in tourism product

2021; Volume: 61; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3986/ags.8960

1854-5106

Saša Poljak Istenič, Jasna Fakin Bajec,

Religious Tourism and Spaces

This paper focuses on the Kras/Carso Food Tour to present the challenges of developing a luxury tourism product. The tour's design followed the current strategy of the Slovenian Tourist Board, which defines specific criteria for a luxury experience. Contextualized by the experiential trends in tourism, the paper juxtaposes the bottom-up and top-down perspectives on luxury experiences. The authors argue that mediation by experts familiar with academic discourses and local culture is beneficial for the development of a successful tourism product. The study contributes to the debates on luxury tourism, which have neglected bottom-up perceptions in tourist discourse and overlooked the dilemmas people face when "luxurifying" their traditions and heritage practices.