Understanding tourism support for a craft beer trail: the case of Loudoun County, Virginia

ABSTRACT

Food and drink tourism has become an important form of the tourism trail and a means through which cultural exploration can occur. As a form of sustainable tourism, the craft beer trail is just beginning to gain recognition in academic tourism studies. Food and drink tourism literature documents the need for collaboration as a means to improve knowledge exchange and streamline destination marketing. This study presents the results of potential collaboration between tourism businesses, specifically between accommodation properties and tour/bus companies, in an effort to construct a new craft beer tourism trail in Loudoun County, Virginia. The results show that these two sectors cater to different tourism types, short-break visitors by the accommodations and day visitors by the tour/bus companies. Furthermore, the autonomy of tour/bus companies does not show viable support at the destination marketing level. Therefore, collaborative partnerships should start between brewers and the accommodations sector, which can lead to the future involvement of tour companies.

KEYWORDS:

• Beer tourism
• collaboration
• destination marketing
• rural tourism
• sustainable tourism development