Gastronomic Tourism as a Motor of Local and Regional Development

Gastronomy is becoming one of the key pull factors to define the competitiveness of tourist destinations and to respond to the desires of a kind of traveler increasingly identified with the search for authenticity. The aim of this paper is to present an approach to gastronomy as a key element in the development (and consolidation) of tourist destinations. We also discuss how food and cuisine is a main motivation to visit a certain place or, in our specific case, one of the main motivations for traveling to the city of Cáceres, Spain.