Cheese tourism is a growing niche within the wider Italian food tourism landscape. Around 32.7% of Italian tourists, equal to 6.8 million people, say they have already enjoyed cheese-related experiences. To understand the phenomenon more clearly, it is useful to analyse how travellers behave, from information sources to booking channels, transport and accommodation choices.
How travellers choose experiences
Decisions related to cheese-based food tourism are shaped by multiple information sources. The most important are recommendations from relatives and friends (55.6%), followed by social media such as Instagram (39%) and Facebook (37.8%), tourism and food-related websites (37.8%), and TV programmes or series (32.7%). Travel magazines and specialist guides play a smaller role, though they still retain some influence among older generations.
Generational differences are significant. Generation Z tends to prefer Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Millennials rely more heavily on Facebook. Generation X and Baby Boomers still use online sources, but remain more attached to guides and magazines.
Booking patterns
The central role of online tools is confirmed in booking behaviour. Phone calls account for 33.9% of bookings, online intermediaries for 31.4%, email for 30.8% and destination tourism portals for 26.5%. Once travellers are on site, however, direct booking becomes the main mode, reaching 39%. Travel agencies and tour operators play a more limited role both before and during the holiday.
Transport and accessibility
The most common means of transport used to visit dairies and wine or cheese-related businesses is the car, chosen by 85.8% of travellers. At the same time, a desire to reduce car use is emerging for future trips, with growing interest in more sustainable alternatives such as bicycles, trains and other forms of public transport. This reflects a broader attention to green mobility even within food tourism.
Accommodation choices
Cheese tourists most often stay in bed and breakfasts (53.6%), agritourism properties (37.6%) and hotels (34.5%). More specialised formats, such as food, wine or oil-themed hotels or country relais, are still not very common in actual use, but they are highly desired by travellers. This suggests interesting potential for integrated hospitality models connected directly with production experiences.
A demand oriented towards immersion and sustainability
Cheese tourism does not concern only tastings and dairy visits. It also involves complex decisions about how travellers search for information, how they book, how they move and where they stay. Future demand appears increasingly oriented towards more sustainable, immersive and place-based experiences, creating new opportunities for operators and destinations able to organise coherent offers around local production systems.
