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Help Center - General


Frequently Asked Questions

    Traveling Spoon creates meaningful travel by connecting people with authentic, cultural food experiences in people’s homes around the world. Traveling Spoon offers in-home meals with our vetted hosts as well as in-home cooking classes and market tours as an extra add-on to many of the meal experiences.

    Traveling Spoon connects travelers with trusted, authentic food experiences in people’s homes around the world. We have traveled the world to find the best home-cooks who provide travelers with memorable, meaningful culinary experiences. Browse our destinations and hosts to find an experience that fits your interests and budget and you will be on your way to Traveling off the Eaten Path!

    Traveling Spoon is currently in several countries across Asia, Europe and Mexico. View a complete list of where we are here. We are excited to expand to more locations, soon. Sign up for our newsletter to be kept in the loop when we open new locations!

    We are proud that every single photo you see was taken by someone from the Traveling Spoon team. The photos on the host pages are of the wonderful hosts you will be dining with and the images of the food are of the food prepared by that host. We love food, and photography, and promise that we will never use stock photography or deliberately misrepresent. What you see is what you get!

    Didn’t see your question answered here? Contact us at help@travelingspoon.com or through our online contact form here. We’re happy to help.

    Yes, we are offering experiences. We have both virtual cooking lessons (which you can see and book at travelingspoon.com/onlinecookingclasses) and are also are starting to offer in-person experiences as travel restrictions open up. Please note, you must follow all local guidelines for the regions where you are traveling. Also note that hosts may decide not to host to protect themselves and their families, this is at their discretion. If they decide to not host their calendars will be blocked. All of our experiences, as always, remain small, private experiences.

    Wellness checks + communication: Please take your temperature one day before your Traveling Spoon experience and confirm that you do not have COVID-19 symptoms. Experiences will be rescheduled or cancelled should you experience COVID-19 symptoms. Guests and hosts are required to inform each other and cancel experiences if they have COVID-19 symptoms or have been in touch with anyone who has experienced COVID-19 symptoms in the past 14 days.

    Wear masks or facial coverings: Both hosts and guests will wear masks or appropriate facial coverings whenever possible.

    Avoid shaking hands: You will be greeted warmly but will avoid shaking hands and being in close contact during the experience.

    Wash hands often: Hosts and guests will wash hands before, during, and after preparing or serving food. Guests will have access to handwashing facilities that have soap, water and single-use towels or napkins available throughout the experience. Hand sanitizer will be accessible to use throughout their experience.

    Wear gloves: Hosts will wear disposable clinical gloves when setting the table, preparing and serving food.

    Maintain social distancing: Hosts and guests will maintain a distance of at least 6 feet while interacting.

    Individually-served food: Food will be served individually rather than family style.

    Home cleaning standards: Prior to guest arrival, homes will be thoroughly cleaned and high-touch areas, including the bathroom, table-setting, and doors and knobs, will be sanitized.

    We offer both online and in-person classes. Traveling Spoon first started offering in-person meals, cooking classes and market tours with our hosts around the world. Following the pandemic we also began offering virtual cooking classes, and we now offer over 150 private, online cooking classes with our hosts. Our virtual classes are scheduled at your mutual convenience and happen over video chat. You can see all of our online experiences and book at travelingspoon.com/onlinecookingclasses

Ambassador FAQ

    Ambassadors help us bring on new hosts to our community. All of our hosts are personally vetted, which means a Traveling Spoon team member or ambassador visits our hosts home, tastes their food, and provides important feedback on the experience. Ambassadors receive their experience for free in exchange for their review.

    We are looking to find people who are passionate about our mission of making travel more meaningful, love meeting local people and tasting local foods, and are excellent photographers and written communicators. You do not need to have professional photography experience. On top of that, of course we are doing a bit of match-making and are trying to find ambassadors where we have hosts in need of immediate vetting. You can find the most up-to-date list of where we need ambassadors on this page: https://www.travelingspoon.com/become-ambassador

    We are looking for ambassadors wherever we have hosts in the final application stages who need to be vetted. You can find the most up-to-date list of where we need ambassadors on this page: https://www.travelingspoon.com/become-ambassador

    Please indicate your interest by filling out our ambassador application form here: https://www.travelingspoon.com/become-ambassador/new Please note we give priority to those people living in or traveling to the areas where we have indicated an immediate need. We will then contact you via email to learn more about your travel plans. If it sounds like it might be a fit to meet with one of our hosts, we will conduct a video or phone training call to train you in our ambassador process, and finally we will schedule your vetting with your host. After your trial experience, we ask ambassadors to return their photographs and detailed vetting document within 10 days.

    Ambassadors are an unpaid position. You receive a free meal and experience in exchange for sending us your photographs and a completed host vetting questionnaire. Please note we do not pay our ambassadors to travel; we match hosts with ambassadors who are living in or already traveling to one of our host destinations. In case you are visiting a city where we have an experience that needs to be vetted, we will be happy to work with you.

    We ask our ambassadors to use an SLR or professional-quality camera. Photos taken via iPhone or other smartphone are not allowed for our ambassador program. If you have questions about your camera you can always email us at ambassadors@travelingspoon.com.

    No! Anyone is welcome to be an ambassador and you do not need to be a professional photographer to apply. That being said, photographs are an important component of our host's profiles so we look for ambassadors who have access to an SLR or other high-quality camera and who are comfortable taking well-composed photographs.

    Some of our ambassadors have vetted multiple experiences, and some of our ambassadors have vetted just one host. How frequently you do a vetting will depend on your own availability and where you are traveling as well as our current areas of host need. We love getting to know our ambassadors and working with them on a continued basis!

Contact Us!

    We’d love to hear from you! You can find all of our contact details on our contact page, as well as an online form if you’d like to contact us through the website. We look forward to hearing from you.