Culinary travel has been a steadily growing tourism sector over the last decade. Tourists are increasingly traveling for food, letting where they eat determine how and where they travel. As a result, for cities and countries looking to promote themselves, culinary tourism has become an essential and powerful branding element. But can this kind of travel be about more than simply food?

This session will explore how Culinary Backstreets, a leading provider of food tours that operates in a dozen different cities around the world, uses food-oriented travel to promote cross-cultural communication and sustainable tourism – and, ultimately, more impactful experiences.

Yigal Schleifer is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Culinary Backstreets. Created in 2012, Culinary Backstreets covers the local and traditional food scene and offers immersive small group culinary walks in a dozen cities around the world. Between 2002 and 2010, Yigal was based in Istanbul, where he worked as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and the German Press Agency (dpa). While in Istanbul he also co-founded Istanbul Eats (istanbuleats.com), an award-winning blog about Istanbul’s local food scene, and co-wrote a guidebook of the same name. He also launched "Istanbul Calling," a blog about Turkish foreign and domestic affairs.

Yigal’s work has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Ha’aretz, the Times (London) and several other publications.