Developing beer tourism in South Africa: international perspectives

Abstract: Beer tourism is a growing dimension of culinary or food tourism. Although South Africa is traditionally associated with wine tourism the country is enjoying the development of beer tourism, in particular associated with the expansion of craft beer micro-breweries. Against this background the paper situates the emergence of South African beer tourism as part of the wider international growth of beer tourism. An analysis is presented of key trends in research on beer tourism, including of policy-related issues. It is argued that whilst lessons may be learned from the experience of wine tourism that there is a need for expanding the amount of beer tourism specific scholarship. In particular, there is a significant agenda for tourism scholars around the relationships between the burgeoning of craft beer and of incipient forms of craft beer tourism. This agenda includes the need to profile beer tourists, understand the participation of breweries in beer tourism, the importance of neo-localism for the craft beer industry in South Africa, and evaluate the impacts of beer tourism initiatives for local economic development