Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.20867/thm.32.2.4
The past, present, and future of travel and tourism literature: Insights from a bibliometric review
Anish Yousaf
; Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Business School, Department of Marketing, United Kingdom
*
Babak Taheri
; Texas A&M University, Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management & Tourism, United States
Rishi Dwesar
orcid.org/0000-0002-1033-8588
; IFHE University, Icfai Business School (IBS), India
Martin Gannon
; University of Edinburgh, Business School, United Kingdom
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Purpose – This study identifies and maps the past, present, and future of travel and tourism
literature by drawing insights from a bibliometric analysis of papers from the Scopus database.
The study has two objectives: (i) to explore and identify the different theoretical characteristic
of extant travel and tourism literature, (ii) to identify emerging research trends, gaps, and
potential future research areas in travel and tourism literature.
Methodology/Design/Approach - Meta-data for 15,647 peer-reviewed articles, published
across 2104 journals, was downloaded from Scopus, with the bibliometric software
VOSviewer used to analyze, map, and visualize publication trends therein.
Findings – Analysis revealed the identification of burgeoning research areas, setting agendas
for future work within the travel and tourism domain. To understand the evolution of key
research themes over time in travel and tourism, we identified major and minor themes using
a period-wise thematic analysis.
Originality of the research – By analysing publication patterns, collaboration networks, and
citation impact, we provide a comprehensive overview of knowledge dissemination and
collaborative dynamics within the travel and tourism community. Our study also provides a
significant contextual contributions to travel and tourism literature by exploring the evolution
of dominant themes and their temporal growth.
Keywords
ravel and tourism; bibliometric analysis; co-citation analysis; co-author analysis; citation structure analysis; VOS viewer
Hrčak ID:
345122
URI
Publication date:
4.3.2026.
Visits: 319 *