About This Cfp

This special issue aims to encourage and increase collaborations between scholars and practitioners on best practices and potentials around coffee/tea tourism. Tea and coffee, the most consumed beverages in the world, are predicted to be the largest increasing market during 2017-2020 (Yates, Jodlowski, & Court, 2017). However, they cannot merely be seen as a daily drink. The revenue generated by exporting tea and coffee is a critical development vehicle for many countries. For example, coffee is reported with an export turnover of over USD 3.6 billion and is the principal source of income of around 540,000 farmer households in Vietnam (Thong, Nguyen, Bich, & Huong, 2017). In addition to economic benefits, coffee and tea can also act as a tool to preserve cultures and heritages. The traditional coffee-making ceremony in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, works to maintain the indigenous identity (Lyon, 2013). Tea and coffee also work as the ambassadors in national “gastrodiplomacy” campaigns in which food and beverage are introduced to foreign publics. For example, the “Turkish Coffee Truck” initiative in 2012, sponsored by the American-Turkish Business Association and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, was a successful project of promoting Turkish culture through Turkish Coffee (Suntikul, 2017).

The rich culture and diverse geographic traditions of coffee and tea attract the consumers to seek more opportunities to learn about their everyday beverage. Therefore, tours are developed to engage tourists in coffee or tea experiences including unique geography, climate, history, and cultural characteristics related to the coffee or tea terroir (Lyon, 2013). Despite academics and professionals claim that there is a great potential for coffee or tea tourism to be regarded as a growing niche market, very few destinations have completely exploited the huge value-adding opportunities that the coffee or tea production provides for tourism demand (Kleidas & Jolliffe, 2010). Moreover, the behavioural aspects of tourists towards consuming coffee and tea and experiencing diverse culture remain relatively unknown (see Ting et al., 2016). Furthermore, compared to “wine tourism, the definition and concept of “coffee tourism” or “tea tourism” remains vague in literature. Can we see coffee and tea tourism simply as a combination of coffee/tea and tourism? Should coffee and tea tourism be seen as a form of cultural tourism, culinary tourism or commodity tourism (Yun, 2014)? Unfortunately, there are very limited frameworks or models established to analyse the meanings and mechanism of coffee and tea tourism. There is little evidence to substantiate the effect of coffee and tea interest on destination tourism like that of ethnic food and wine (Ting et al., 2019). It is now time to investigate the opportunities and challenges generated by coffee and/or tea tourism so as to extend knowledge pertaining to the subject matter and provide meaningful insights to the industry and stakeholders. Therefore, the call for papers for this special issue includes the following topics:

1. Destination development: focus on effective development strategies, challenges, and positive and negative impacts of coffee/tea tourism on developed and/or developing countries, rural and/or urban areas.
2. Coffee/tea attractions: focus on the cultural and natural attractions that can motivate tourists to coffee/tea destinations. The study may include landscape, plantation, ecology, customs, history, events, festivals, and traditional knowledge of coffee and tea that generates and support coffee/tea tourism industry.
3. New and innovative marketing strategy or approach in relation to product development and diversification, promotion and supply chain from a business standpoint
4. Tourist preference: focus on consumer behaviour aspects as well as various segments of coffee/tea tourists. This includes coffee/tea purchase and consumption trends and the implications of evolving tourists/consumers’ preference and lifestyles.
5. Tourism experiences: consider ideas related to experiential consumption, visitor experience design, and multi-sensory aspects (smellscapes, soundscapes, tastescapes, and the geography of touch) of coffee/tea tourism.
6. Contemporary opportunities and challenges: focus on notions related to sustainability, e-commerce, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the application of robotics.
7. Social practices: fair trade movement, fair labour, education, transformation, rural renaissance or sustainable practices.
8. The state-of-the-art review: review the development of coffee/tea tourism literature and provide directions for future research.
9. Cross-border studies which compare and contrast tourists’ behaviour towards perceiving, purchasing and/or consuming coffee/tea.
10. Methodological advancement in addressing measurement issues and providing the better estimation to understanding behavioural matters in coffee/tea tourism.

Types of Papers:

Empirical papers using a quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods approach which make a contribution to knowledge and practice. Cross-sectional studies are acceptable although papers using experimental or longitudinal design are preferred.

Methodological papers which address measurement issues, provide better estimation and provide more robust methods and procedures are welcome. Well-written conceptual papers using meta-analysis or systematic literature review will be considered.

All the papers will be subject to the journal’s standard double-blind review procedure after a preliminary screening by the guest editors. Ten (10) papers will be published in this special issue. Papers not accepted for the special issue may be considered for publication in a regular issue.