The relevance of practice theories for tourism research

Practice theories offer a new perspective on tourism, by not focussing on individual agents or social structures, but on social practices as the starting point for theorising and conducting research. Illustrated by the practice of Arctic expedition cruising, we discuss the basic premises of practice theories and their potential applications to tourism studies, including various ways of conceptualising social practices, the principle idea of a flat ontology, the methodological implications and the relevance for tourism policies. Practice theories could contribute to the agenda of tourism studies in three ways, i.e. by enabling in-depth analysis of performed tourism consumption or production practices, by facilitating analysis of change in tourism over time and by unravelling the embeddedness of tourism practices.     

Progress on image analytics: Implications for tourism and hospitality research

Despite the increased recognition of the importance of images as a rich data source, the full potential of images to advance tourism and hospitality knowledge, both conceptually and theoretically, has yet to be fully tapped. This study provides a critical review of image analytics, examining its broad implications for tourism and hospitality research. This paper offers the progress of image definitions, features and related theories, as well as presents a methodological framework for conducting image-related studies, complementing the dominant textual analysis used in tourism and hospitality research. The paper makes contributions to the tourism methodological literature by developing a point of reference for the application of image analytics in tourism and hospitality studies.     

Performance measurement in tourism firms: A content analytical meta-approach

This paper performs a meta-analysis of tourism performance measurement by synthesising tourism and hospitality research. A framework for understanding and advancing knowledge about tourism performance measurement is presented to overview three important dimensions of the tourism performance measurement literature (unit of analysis, approaches and disciplines). Computer-Aided Text Analysis of 978 articles covering a nineteen-year period, 1996 to 2014, is used to analyse approaches and disciplinary contexts. Specifically, we aim to advance a concrete understanding of tourism firms' performance measurement literature and to assess whether the temporal trends in performance measurement literature will help position tourism firms for the emerging tourism context. We propose some key research areas to guide a future tourism performance measurement research agenda.     

A critical evaluation of importance–performance analysis

This study is a methodological evaluation of studies on importance and performance measurement, and importance–performance analysis (IPA) which has gained widespread acceptance in the hospitality and tourism research. A synthesis of IPA literature on conceptual and measurement issues is presented with a view to identifying and mitigating potential validity concerns.     

Reviewing integrated sustainability indicators for tourism

Integrated sustainability indicators for tourism (ISIT) address tourism as an element of both economic and socio-ecological systems and as actively integrated in multi-level policy-making and planning. This paper aims to review studies of ISIT in peer-reviewed journals with a focus on methodological approaches. By specifically examining ISIT, this study embraces the interdisciplinary nature of both sustainability science and tourism studies. The results are based on a systematic literature review and categorization of the studies’ academic disciplines, methods and organization of indicators. The results reveal that despite being a relatively young area of study, research on ISIT has developed simultaneously across multiple academic disciplines, and is expanding. There seems to be greater interest in developing new methodologies than applying existing indicator frameworks. Most papers refer to indicators thematically and thus discuss tourism separately in the contexts of environmental, social or economic impact. However, emerging approaches analyze tourism as a system of interconnected components and an element of multi-level policy-making. These approaches emphasize public participation and a continuous redefinition of sustainability challenges in response to changes in socio-ecological systems. Current research on ISIT thus focuses on the interconnectedness of indicators and sustainable development as a dynamic process rather than an end goal.     

Quality of life (QOL) and well-being research in tourism

Given the recent proliferation of the research on quality of life and wellbeing in tourism, we review this literature and provide guidance to spur future research. The review focuses on two major constituencies: residents of host communities and tourists. Specifically, the goals of this paper are (1) describe study findings, (2) highlight sampling and data collection methods, and (3) discuss issues of construct measurement. The vast majority of the studies related to these two constituencies show that tourism experiences and activities have a significant effect on both tourists' overall life satisfaction and wellbeing of residents. That is, tourists' experiences and tourism activities tend to contribute to positive affect in a variety of life domains such as family life, social life, leisure life, cultural life, among others. Future research is discussed in relation to these two constituencies.     

Thirty years of research on tourism and hospitality management in China: A review and analysis of journal publications

The tourism industry in China has undergone rapid development since 1978 and is foreseen as being the world's largest tourism market by 2020. However, no comprehensive review of literature in this context has been completed, and international academics have little understanding of China tourism research. This paper aims to provide an overview of 119 articles selected from six leading English language academic journals published from 1978 to 2008. Content analysis points to the evolving trend in Asian universities in terms of journal contributions. Consumer behavior has gained popularity as a research topic, and will likely remain as a prevalent research theme in the near future. A tendency toward multiple-authorship, rather than single authorship, and more sophisticated methodological procedures has also been found. Future analysis may focus on including other forms of publications and Chinese language journals to capture the full picture of China tourism.     

Vulnerable populations with psychological disorders in tourism: Methodological challenges and recommended solutions for empirical research

Vulnerable groups, including travel-eligible tourists with medical conditions (e.g., early- and mid-stage dementia), represent an emerging niche market in the tourism industry that has been largely overlooked in the tourism literature. By identifying and addressing the challenges of conducting empirical research for this population, unreliable and misrepresentative data (and resulting imprudent recommendations) can be avoided. Given that tourism-based interventions may provide a new avenue for patient-oriented treatments, rigorous methodological guidelines are needed to advance knowledge in this interdisciplinary area. This paper provides insights into the potential challenges of empirical research involving tourists with psychological disorders. Collecting primary data from target participants requires preparation and deliberate contemplation when identifying and recruiting travel-eligible tourists. Solutions such as clear recruitment criteria, randomized controlled trials, and integrated health research approaches are recommended. Resultant studies on exposure and outcomes can inform tourism management and marketing strategies regarding these populations.     

Review of tourism forecasting research with internet data

Internet techniques significantly influence the tourism industry and Internet data have been used widely used in tourism and hospitality research. However, reviews on the recent development of Internet data in tourism forecasting remain limited. This work reviews articles on tourism forecasting research with Internet data published in academic journals from 2012 to 2019. Then, the findings ae synthesized based on the following Internet data classifications: search engine, web traffic, social media, and multiple sources. Results show that among such classifications, search engine data are most widely incorporated into tourism forecasting. Time series and econometric forecasting models remain dominant, whereas artificial intelligence methods are still developing. For unstructured social media and multi-source data, methodological advancements in text mining, sentiment analysis, and social network analysis are required to transform data into time series for forecasting. Combined Internet data and forecasting models will help in improving forecasting accuracy further in future research.     

Locating Muslimah in the travel and tourism research

Female Muslims have commonly been stereotyped as a subordinate group. However, their tourism participations have evolved through time that recently, it became a niche tourism segment of its own. Through reviewing existing literature, this study provides a comprehensive analysis and interpretation on the phenomenon of female Muslim travel/tourism. Common research domains were: ‘Choice of travel companion(s)’, ‘Issue of gender subordination’, ‘Gendered identity and religious stereotypes’ and ‘Factors facilitating travel’. This study asserted that female Muslims' perceptions and experiences of travel/tourism are majorly impacted by their religious and gendered identities. The literature appraisal also demonstrated scholarship progressions by analyzing and discussing research approaches taken by existing studies. Ultimately, it drew insights on research gaps and future research directions.     

A review of research on tourism risk,crisis and disaster management: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on tourism risk,crisis and disaster management

This article reviews 142 papers published between 1960 and 2018 on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management. The article (1) takes a thematic approach to synthesise past research focus and identifies gaps, (2) examines research methodologies employed, and (3) suggests future research and methodological approaches to help progress the field. The article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management, which contains past and hot off the press work on the topic and will continue to grow as new articles on the topic appear in Annals.     

On the determinants of tourism performance

The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative direction in order to analyze the determinants of tourism performance. The literature on this topic reveals diverging results about the impacts of the determinants of tourism performance. This paper advocates for the identification of the multiple and complex effects of the determinants in order to overcome the characterization of single net effects derived from an average behavior. A two-stage efficiency analysis is implemented, mixing Data Envelopment Analysis and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. An illustration about the tourism efficiency in French regions is proposed and emphasizes the multiple impacts of the determinants.     

Smart Tourism Design: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on designing tourism places

Design is now considered a crucial activity in contributing to the success of tourism enterprises as well as destinations. This article builds upon the ideas first introduced in the two edited books, namely Design Science in Tourism and Analytics in Smart Tourism Design, which brought the conceptual and methodological foundations for designing tourism places to the forefront of tourism literature. Specifically, this article first introduces the intellectual background that dates back to Clare Gunn's seminal work on Vacationscape, which has evolved into a systematic approach that incorporates tools developed in psychology, behavioral economics, marketing, management and more recently data sciences. It then describes the tourism design system as a general framework, followed by a discussion on the nature and role of smart tourism in enhancing this framework. The article then introduces the Curated Series on Tourism Design by identifying a group of articles published in the Journal which address many essential issues shaping the future of the tourism industry.     

Networking for sustainable tourism – towards a research agenda

This paper proposes a research agenda for networking for sustainable tourism research based on a collaborative workshop of international tourism academics and researchers and an extensive review of the relevant literature. Each year, Building Excellence in Sustainable Tourism – an Education Network (BEST EN) holds a Think Tank on a topical issue in sustainable tourism education. One aim of the Think Tank is to develop a relevant research agenda that draws on the collective knowledge of participants and acknowledges the interdependent economic, environmental and social objectives in sustainable tourism. Six main areas were identified as important for a research agenda on networking for sustainable tourism and its implementation: theory, methodology and conceptual issues; actors, culture and power; lifecycle, evolution and dynamics of networks; knowledge transfer; macro-perspectives and strategic action, vision, innovation and management of networks. This paper presents and discusses these research themes in the context of a literature review on networks and networking for sustainability in tourism. It is found that substantial progress has been made in the investigation of private sector networks at the destination levels; research on networks involving public sector stakeholders and networks across sectors and levels of governance, however, remains limited.     

Consumer behavior research in hospitality and tourism journals

In this review, I identify key trends and “camps” in consumer behavior research in the field of hospitality and tourism research based on a thorough analysis of articles published in 2003. I also highlight some challenges faced by our discipline in terms of theory development and methodological issues.     

Towards decolonising tourism and hospitality research in the Philippines

In recent years, scholars have focused their attention on demarcating the neocolonial situations that permeate the tourism and hospitality academy. The ‘critical turn’ in tourism studies called for the decolonisation of tourism and hospitality research. In this paper, I explore and challenge the state of tourism and hospitality research in the Philippines, by analysing the works of Filipino tourism and hospitality academics. Through a systematic quantitative literature review, I identify the research themes investigated by Filipino scholars on Philippine tourism and hospitality and examine the methodologies and epistemologies employed in the selected research outputs. The findings indicate that colonial legacies and neocolonial situations are strongly present in Philippine tourism and hospitality knowledge production. To challenge these scenarios, I suggest a decolonial agenda informed by Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology), a native epistemological perspective. This article serves as a contribution to the epistemological decolonisation of tourism knowledge production in Asian contexts.     

Photographs in tourism research: Prejudice,power, performance and participant-generated images

Photography has often been considered tainted as a source of research data, even in tourism, its natural habitat. This situation is undoubtedly a legacy of the prejudice that many social scientists held toward the use of visual data when the academic study of tourism took off in the 1970s and 1980s. Tourism research has therefore persistently favoured textual data over visual data. This paper argues that the power of photography to prove and move can be harnessed to bridge this theoretical and practical cognitive gap. Issues relating to the performance of photography, including those of timing and intent, as well as the speed of information exchange, need however to be considered when designing and implementing research using photographic data. This implies a need to review the 'circle of representation' of tourism destination images, as well as to divide participant-generated image methods into two strands: found photographs and commissioned photographs.     

Current issues in tourism: Mitigating climate change in sustainable tourism research

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.     

Trends and patterns in sustainable tourism research: a 25-year bibliometric analysis

In the quarter of a century since the release of the 1987 Brundtland Report, sustainable tourism has emerged as the dominant paradigm in tourism development. However, the debate, discourse, and criticism of this subfield of tourism research continues. To address such concerns the purpose of this paper is to explore trends and patterns in sustainable tourism research over the past 25 years. A 25-year bibliometric analysis was conducted for the four highest ranked journals in the tourism field. Results indicate that the growth in sustainable tourism research has been remarkable, with 492 papers published in these four journals and almost half of these in the last two years of the analysis. The largest proportion of papers published on sustainable tourism was case studies, empirical studies, and critical reviews. This study found that while the theoretical and methodological approaches appear to have matured over time, the subjects and themes in sustainable tourism research, with some exceptions, have remained constant. However, the field is clearly maturing with a move away from definitional and conceptual papers to papers focused on testing and applying theory through empirical research.