Coffee attraction experiences: A narrative sStudy

Reflecting a rich global coffee culture this paper explores the experience of visitors to coffee attractions as reflected through travel narratives published in the coffee trade literature. It first positions coffee related tourism within culinary tourism and then examines the types of attractions related to coffee. Using a typology of coffee attractions derived from the literature on both attractions and coffee travel narratives from five specialized coffee periodicals are reviewed. In doing so the paper makes a dual contribution to both furthering the study of attractions related to coffee tourism and to using narrative study methods in tourism research. In particular it is suggested that the narrative methodology may be applied to the study of other sectors of culinary tourism. A limitation of this study however is the use of secondary sources mainly derived from the coffee specialist literature. Nonetheless the narratives reveal the rich coffee culture and coffee experiences that can be associated with coffee related travel. In addition this exploratory study using published coffee narratives indicates the potential for future research investigating on a first hand basis the coffee experiences of tourists