Culinary Travel: It’s Sizzling
Chris Donnelly, is the owner of Creative Culinary Tours. With the rise of culinary travel in the United States it was time to create a company that totally focuses on culinary travel. With more and more Americans planning travel around food and the popularity of the Food Network and other cable cooking and food related travel it was the perfect time.
A first-of-its-kind national survey on the popular culinary travel niche market shows that 27 million travelers, or 17% of American leisure travelers, engaged in culinary or wine-related activities while traveling within the past three years, based on a new report from the Travel Industry Association (TIA), in partnership with Gourmet and the International Culinary Tourism Association. Another study shows, these travelers are younger, more affluent and better educated than non-culinary travelers. They are clearly motivated by unique experiences, reinforcing the benefits of focusing on a destination’s individual environmental and cultural elements. The survey was conducted by Edge Research among a representative sample of 2,364 U.S. leisure traveler respondents.
The backbone of Chris’s culinary experience comes from working in many fine restaurants throughout the East Coast. The majority of his training came from working at Cinelli’s Country House in Cherry Hill, NJ. This is where Chris perfected the art of tableside and fine dining. Chris also worked many years at the Hermitage Inn, a Wine Spectator Gold Award Winning restaurant. Here he was able to learn about fine wines from around the world through the knowledge of James McGovern, owner and proprietor.
Chris began planning educational programs for Elderhostel (Adult Ongoing Education) over eight years ago offering programs featuring Revolutionary War History. In 2003, he was looking for some new programs and came up with a program entitled Vermont: A Week of Fine Foods. This was the start of culinary programs for Sugar Tours. In 2005 we started another culinary related program entitled Lobsters, Wineries and Fine Foods. The first year we offered two programs and now offer six which are always completely sold out. For the tour market he is offering similar programs to his educational programs but he has deleted a small portion of the educational factor.
My idea of a culinary tour is not just a visit to a culinary school for a meal or a winery for a wine tasting; it’s more about a total experience. If you visit a Rhode Island winery you don’t just do a tour and tasting, add a traditional Rhode Island clambake along with the tasting. In the evening try working with state gourmet food associations to bring in speakers for an evening program. Chris has also established working relationships with many off the beaten path food producers where he is able to visit for programs including a water buffalo dairy, an organic cheese maker and other boutique wineries in New England. His belief is that this is the trend for the baby boomer market and the new trend should be entitled Agri-culinary tourism. He considers his programs a cruise on wheels.
Creative Culinary Tours is now offering programs throughout New England including a six night culinary adventure, Country Inn Cooking Weekends featuring different cuisines, as well as selling the Celebrity Chef Weekends at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. Programs are now also available in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. It takes time to be creative!!
Chris is actively involved in many different travel associations and has been a featured speaker on culinary travel at the Boston Globe Travel Marketplace, Taste for Travel, New England Harvest Meeting, Massachusett’s Governors Conference on Travel and Tourism and has spoken at the International Culinary Tourism Association Symposium in Sturbridge, MA.
Chris Donnelly
Creative Culinary Tours
888-889-8681
