Gastronomic Travel Guides: Historical As-pects of the Genre

This article examines the historical stages of development of gastronomic tour-ism guides as a specific genre of scientific and reference literature for tourists in a global context. The author for the first time proposes an authorial definition of the term " gas-tronomic tourism guides”, develops periodization of the history of this genre from a global perspective and substantiates each stage: 1) The prehistory of gastronomic travel guides (from antiquity to the early 18th century); 2) The phase of travel literature for-mation (mid-18th to early 19th centuries); 3) The phase of literature for travel (mid-19th century to 1950); 4) The phase of gastronomic travel guide industry formation (1950–1990s); 5) The modern phase of multi-formatting travel guides for food experiences (from the 1990s onwards). The article gives an optimal multi-format model of a gastro-nomic guide's functioning today and outlines that modern travel guides for food experi-ences, satisfying tourists with information about culinary destinations, have got another one important practical tasks to support and promote regional culinary specialties ("ter-roirs") as elements of national pride and heritage, and, through them, to advance the tourist image of countries, regions, and municipalities.