Journal of Foodservice Business Research

Beverage Experiences and Tourism in the Asia Pacific: A Consumer Focus

This special issue aims to examine beverage experiences and tourism in the Asia Pacific region. Specifically, it considers how consumers respond to beverages as cultural cues, experiential features, and elements that shape destination appeal.

Beverages such as sake, soju, shochu, tea, and plum wine carry deep cultural significance across East Asia (Sasaki & Sone, 2015; Thomson et al., 2017). Today, a wider range of beverage styles is gaining recognition across the region, with distilleries and wineries earning international awards. Beverages are central to branding, place identity, and consumer perception, and they shape how visitors understand and engage with destinations (Nutta et al., 2025; Campelo et al., 2014). The APAC landscape continues to evolve as destinations develop new beverage offerings and attract rising numbers of international visitors. Yet the experiential aspects of many beverages remain underexplored (Spence, 2012; Gunasekar et al., 2022). Existing scholarship still leans heavily toward Western production regions, partly because much of the foundational beverage marketing literature has emerged from those contexts (Martínez-Navarro & Sellers-Rubio, 2024). Meanwhile, global interest in Asian cultural products has heightened curiosity about beverage traditions and practices in the region. Altogether, these trends signal the need to expand inquiry into how beverages shape tourism and consumer behavior throughout the Asia Pacific.

Submissions may explore topics such as:

• consumer perception
• experiential consumption
• aesthetics and design
• sensory marketing
• branding and identity
• consumer engagement and intentions
• behavioral responses within tourism contexts
• beverage culture and destination appeal
• APAC beverage traditions and tourism development

(References available upon request)