Craft brewery tourism best-practices: A research agenda

Whilst prima facie the benefits of tourism practice adoption appear beneficial to the sector, their adoption by individual craft-breweries has been ad hoc in nature. Typically the emphasis on craft in craft brewery operations necessitates that they adopt an almost myopic product-oriented focus on their niche premium craft-beer products. This product-oriented focus represents a 'double-edged sword' for craft brewery operators: on the one hand, it supports the craft breweries' core business of developing a premium niche product; on the other hand, it limits the ability of the sector to optimise its impact and profitability through tourism practices. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to set out a tourism research agenda focused on the empirical and conceptual exploration of what constitutes 'tourism best-practices' in this, and similar sectors (e.g. whiskey, tea, and other gourmet foods).