Trends in tourism research

The study of tourism as an academic field is a recent phenomenon and, over the last few decades, the field has experienced rapid changes in research focus and methodological sophistication (Xiao and Smith 2006). Tracking these changes provides insights into the growth and development of research in the field, as well as highlighting areas for further attention. This paper extends analyses of the evolution of tourism research ([Dann et al., 1988], [Sheldon, 1991] and [Xiao and Smith, 2006]) to incorporate a range of journals that have become increasingly influential over the past decade. Twelve major tourism journals were selected from the list published by McKercher, Law and Lam (2006): Tourism Management; Annals of Tourism Research; Journal of Travel Research; Journal of Vacation Marketing; Tourism Economics; Journal of Recreation Research; International Journal of Tourism Analysis; Tourism Analysis; Current Issues in Tourism; Journal of Tourism Studies; Tourism Geographies; and Tourism Culture and Communication. McKercher et al used peer assessments to derive quality ratings (on a 1–5 scale) and importance ratings (which combined awareness and quality as a percentage of the total possible score). The 12 selected journals all received a mean quality rating above 3.0, and represented a range of importance ratings, from 16% (Tourism Culture and Communication) to 79% (Annals of Tourism Research). All of the selected journals are accessible electronically. The contents of the 12 journals from 1994 to 2004 (a total of 2868 articles) were categorised into 21 topic areas (Table 1). These topic areas were derived inductively from a pilot analysis of a sample of approximately 200 articles, taken from across the 12 journals. The first three journals (as listed above) contained the most articles (together accounting for over 50% of all articles published), and have been consistently ranked as the top Tourism journals ([Pechlaner et al., 2004], [McKercher et al., 2006] and [Ryan, 2005]). Six of the journals commenced publication after 1994.