Vegan difficulties in tourist destination

An exploratory study

Abstract

Veganism is a philosophy of life that seeks to avoid the exploitation of animals and cruelty to them, whether for food, clothing or other purposes. Such a posture generates daily restrictions for its practitioners, which can be aggravated when traveling. This article aims to identify and analyze, based on a exploratory research, the main difficulties that vegans encounter when planning their trips, considering the food, lodging and attractions offered by the destination. The sample was non-probabilistic and the limiting factors were: having access to the internet, being a user of social networks and being vegan. 170 valid respondents were counted. Among the results, the following stand out: among respondents, there is a significant predominance (85.88%) of those who recently adopted veganism; in relation to food, the main difficulties include finding vegan options and exclusively vegan establishments; in relation to tourist attractions, most respondents indicated that there was no difficulty for refusing to participate in activities involving animal exploitation; although a significant portion (33.5%) has difficulty finding attractions that do not involve animal exploitation; in relation to means of accommodation, 31.7% of the respondents declared that they did not find difficulties, and the others pointed out difficulties in finding food options (88 occurrences). It is concluded that, although veganism includes any form of animal exploitation for food, clothing, hygiene and beauty and entertainment purposes, the difficulties indicated by the respondents correspond mainly to the food plan.