The World Food Travel Association introduced the Awards in 2016 as the culinary tourism industry's first awards for excellence and innovation. The Awards were first called the "FoodTrekking Awards". In 2022, we changed the name to "Global Culinary Travel Awards" to help increase industry understanding of the Awards and their purpose.

In the first several years, we changed the Awards categories annually to respond to trends identified by our leadership and our judges. Then, in 2022, we made the decision to link the Awards categories to our six new practice areas. This move helped achieve consistency in the awards categories, which also helps applicants to know what the future awards categories will be. While we no longer use the six practice areas officially, we keep the practice area categories for use with the Awards.

In 2020, we paused the Awards cycle due to the pandemic. Then we resumed the program in 2021. Effective with the 2024 Awards, we introduced a new Culinary Heritage category.

We used to hold a public Awards Ceremony that took place annually at the FoodTreX Food Travel Innovation Summit in London. After the pandemic, the price to hold conferences in London soared to an untenable level. Therefore as required, we have also held online press conferences with winners and the media.

In 2020, we introduced our Food Tourism Industry Lifetime Achievement Awards, both to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to our industry, as well as to shine a ray of hope during an otherwise dark time in travel and tourism. We stopped this type of award after the 2022 winner.