Olives and Touristic Experiences

Abstract

Gastronomy is one of the main motivations that inspires and triggers the tourist journey. It is frequently interconnected with intangible dimensions attached with a specific place. Olive oil tourism is a specific product inside gastronomic tourism with the potential to generate a diversity of experiences for the tourist. As olive oil tourism depends on a multiplicity of different actors, whose actions need to be integrated, its current situation is still far way from its potential in regions that are not able to implement this integration practice. That is exactly the case of Mirandela (a small municipality in the northeast of Portugal) examined in this chapter. Even with an actor (the Olive Tree and Olive Oil Museum) with a strong potential to act as an articulator of the offer, that integration is not even in the beginning yet, losing the destination the opportunity of generating valuable olive oil experiences to the tourists.