An Overview of the European Research in Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality since the First Indexed Publication

Abstract

This document constitutes an overview of the research performed by authors whose main affiliation is in a European research institution, in the field of ‘tourism, leisure and hospitality’, since the first indexed publication in 1969. The method used includes measures, such as the most productive authors, institutions and countries, as well as relational techniques which depict results and allow for the analysis of the scientific and intellectual structure of the field, especially regarding the main topics addressed. Results show that Dimitrios Buhalis is the most productive author, authors from UK institutions are the most influential, UK and Spain are the most productive countries in terms of published articles and that the main topics addressed in the last decade refer to social media and climate change. Among the major implications are that it offers a retrospective overview of tourism research, contributes to the literature on research advances and it serves to identify the main research areas in this study.

1. Introduction

Research has increased significantly in the ‘tourism, leisure and hospitality’ (TLH) field over the last decade [1]. In fact, research in this field has become fundamental, directly contributing to the development of our society and economy. There are many ways of evaluating the research contributions. One of them is related to bibliometrics methods.

Recently, bibliometric studies in the TLH field have increased significantly. Table A1 (see appendix) summarises some of those studies published since 2018 indexed in the Web of Science (WoS), grouping them by topic analysed.

Given this significant increase in bibliometric works in TLH, the goal of this chapter is to assess what other researchers have provided to this field, thereby complementing previous studies such as that of Mulet-Forteza et al. [2]. Some previous articles have presented research on a global level offering an overview of the tourism research [1]; others have undertaken studies for certain regions, such as Turkey [3, 4, 5] or Southeast Asia [6]; as observed in Table A1, many others have analysed the research on specific topics, such as sustainable tourism, trust, quality service, ICT and social media and tourism education [7] some studies have focused on specific journals [8]; others have addressed analysis on the evolution of topics of research combining bibliometrics with others methodologies [9]. Finally, it is noteworthy to highlight some guides to undertake bibliometric studies such as that of Mulet et al. [10].

The efficacy of bibliometric investigations is contingent upon their capacity to quantify the prominence of scholarly output within a given discipline. In addition to elucidating research productivity and impact, bibliometrics and reviews serve to corroborate assertions regarding the extent of research coverage and to delineate patterns for a comprehensive comprehension of the social processes underpinning the advancement of a particular field [11].

Our study complements that of Mulet et al. [2]. That work analysed the most cited documents, the co-citation among journals, the geographic patterns of collaboration and the main topics addressed in research from 1969 to 2018 in Europe. The citation structure indicated that the number of annual publications saw significant growth only after 2007. The co-citations between different journals revealed connections primarily within the ‘hospitality, leisure, sports and tourism’ category, with additional links to business and management journals. The study identified the 50 most cited documents and explored the geographic patterns of collaboration. The analysis of bibliographic coupling suggested collaboration trends between culturally or geographically proximate countries. Lastly, it revealed a high prevalence of keywords related to sustainable development. Our analysis aims to complement the mentioned work, revising the main topics addressed until 2021, and adding an analysis of the most prolific authors, institutions and countries in the TLH research field in Europe. The objectives of the study are specified in the following research questions:

• RQ1: Who are the European authors most productive in the field of TLH and what is the co-citation structure between them?

• RQ2: What are the European most productive institutions in the field of TLH and what is their bibliographic coupling?

• RQ3: What are the most productive countries in the TLH field and what is their bibliographic coupling?

• RQ4: What are the most prominent research topics analysed by authors whose main affiliation is a European institution in the TLH field?

Regarding RQ1 and RQ2, in line with works such as those of Martínez-García et al. [12], McKercher [13], Vishwakarma and Mukherjee [14] and Zhao et al. [15], we have analysed who are the authors from European institutions that have published the most in the TLH field. With regards to RQ3, we have selected all countries in the continent of Europe, not only those of the EU. RQ4 is in line with works in different disciplines: Lu et al. [16], Su et al. [17], Zhang [18] and Serrano et al. [19], which studied key topics addressed.

The article is divided as follows: next section presents the methodology, following section presents the results and their discussion. Finally, the last section offers the conclusions, limitations and implications of the document.

2. Methodology

Web of Science (WoS) is the most important database by the scientific community [20], which is the reason why it is used to undertake our work. Specifically, we have taken into consideration the journals indexed in June 2022 in the category ‘Hospitality, Leisure, Sports and Tourism’ as a starting point for the work, eliminating only those journals focusing strictly on sport. Once the journals that are part of the database were selected, the following was to refine the information offered by the database only for those documents affiliated with European countries. After applying these filters, the search returned 7597 documents. Only those having passed a strict arbitration process were considered, following works such as that of Coll-Ramis et al. [7], which is a total of 6587 documents.

In order to evaluate pertinent literature for this study, we implemented the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) flow diagram, recommended by authoritative scholars, including Munn et al. [21] Martinez-Garcia et al. [20] and Page et al. [22]. Deviating from the conventional application of PRISMA, we customised the flow by introducing a final phase or section dedicated to bibliometrics. This additional step involved a meticulous examination aimed at rectifying errors identified in the indexing of publications [23]. The graphical representation of this process through PRISMA is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Adapted PRISMA flowchart diagram applied.

Given that there is no consensus in academia on the most appropriate bibliometric method, in this study we have used different bibliometric techniques [10]. In this regard, we use the number of publications and the number of citations, the h-index [24] and the volume of citations per document. These are indicators that combine both publications and citations in the same index. For that, h-index measures the number of documents that have obtained almost h citations, while the number of citations per document measures how influential each article is. Other measures included in this study are the authors, institutions and countries that have published the most; publications and citations per author from the most productive countries; general university classification such as ‘Shanghai Ranking (ARWU)’, and ‘Quacquarelli Symonds (QS)’; publications per year; and most influential keywords. We have also depicted relational techniques [23] using the free software VOSviewer [25], such as co-authorship analysis, bibliographic couplings and author keyword co-occurrence. Co-authorship analysis refers to the production of a document by several authors; bibliographic coupling happens when two works cite a common third one in their reference lists indicating that there is a high probability that both works have addressed interconnected research topics [26]. Moreover, co-occurrence author keywords offer a map of the most frequent keywords used in the documents under analysis [23].

3. Results

First, we will analyse the first research question.

3.1 Most productive authors

In this section, we will assess the 50 most productive European authors and their co-citation structure, to answer RQ1.

Dimitros Buhalis (Bournemouth University, UK) is the author who has published the largest number of papers and with the highest number of citations, h-index and citations per paper. Other highly productive authors include Stephen John Page (University of Hertfordshire, UK), Stefan Gossling (Western Norway Research Institute, Norway), Xavier Font (University of Surrey, UK) and Tom Baum (University of Strathclyde, UK), all with 32 papers. With respect to the author’s influence, Dimitros Buhalis is followed by Bill Bramwell, Stefan Gossling and Stephen John Page. That said, the numbers for Gang Li (University of Surrey, UK), Richard Sharpley (University of Central Lancashire, UK) and Annette Pritchard (Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK) are also very noteworthy, as they are in positions 5, 6 and 7, respectively, despite a lower number of publications, if Table 1 is ranked by the volume of citations.

R	Author	Institution	Country	TP	TC	SC	H	C/P	≥100	≥50	≥25	≥10	≥5	≥1
1	Buhalis, D	Bournemouth University	United Kingdom	40	4437	70	24	110.93	11	14	23	31	34	39
2	Gossling, S	Western Norway Research Institute	Norway	32	1530	59	21	47.81	3	9	21	27	27	32
3	Page, SJ	University of Hertfordshire	United Kingdom	32	1471	37	19	45.97	5	6	15	23	28	31
4	Font, X	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	32	1036	61	18	32.38	2	5	14	23	24	29
5	Baum, T	University of Strathclyde	United Kingdom	32	825	40	16	25.78	1	4	11	23	28	31
6	Bramwell, B	Sheffield Hallam University	United Kingdom	27	1752	56	20	64.89	5	11	19	22	25	25
7	McCabe, S	Nottingham University Business School	United Kingdom	27	700	22	14	25.93	1	4	10	15	24	27
8	Airey, D	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	26	909	7	14	34.96	1	7	11	16	21	24
9	Altinay, L	Oxford Brookes University	United Kingdom	26	652	22	14	25.08	1	3	9	17	22	26
10	Nijkamp, P	University Adam Mickiewicz of Poznań	Poland	24	438	19	10	18.25	1	2	5	10	16	22
11	Correia, A	University of Algarve	Portugal	24	322	21	11	13.42	0	1	5	11	17	20
12	Li, G	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	23	1142	22	14	49.65	2	4	10	16	17	22
13	Thrane, C	Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences	Norway	23	397	33	11	17.26	0	2	6	14	15	22
14	O’Gorman, KD	Heriot-Watt University	United Kingdom	23	198	19	9	8.61	0	0	1	8	13	21
15	Morgan, N	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	22	824	30	12	37.45	3	7	9	14	17	20
16	Cohen, SA	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	21	841	34	14	40.05	1	7	11	16	19	21
17	Ladkin, A	Bournemouth University	United Kingdom	20	904	9	12	45.20	2	6	11	13	14	20
18	Falk, M	Austrian Institute of Economic Research	Austria	20	256	14	9	12.80	0	1	2	9	12	17
19	Pritchard, A	Cardiff Metropolitan University	United Kingdom	19	1051	32	13	55.32	5	9	11	14	16	18
20	Smeral, E	MODUL University Vienna	Austria	19	415	32	9	21.84	0	3	5	9	12	19
21	Zehrer, A	MCI Management Centre Innsbruck	Austria	19	359	6	10	18.89	0	2	4	11	13	19
22	Sharpley, R	University of Central Lancashire	United Kingdom	18	1181	9	13	65.61	5	5	8	15	15	16
23	Alegre, J	University of the Balearic Islands	Spain	18	867	26	14	48.17	4	4	10	14	15	18
24	Barros, CP	University of Lisboa	Portugal	18	801	13	12	44.50	2	5	9	14	16	17
25	Baggio, R	Tomsk Polytechnic University	Russia	18	624	38	10	34.67	2	5	7	10	14	17
26	Larsen, S	University in Bergen	Norway	18	530	26	11	29.44	1	2	7	12	17	18
27	Kastenholz, E	University of Aveiro	Portugal	18	411	26	10	22.83	0	1	6	10	14	17
28	Brown, L	Bournemouth University	United Kingdom	18	400	12	18	22.22	1	4	5	7	9	15
29	Laesser, C	University of St. Gallen	Switzerland	18	374	9	10	20.78	0	2	5	10	13	17
30	Coles, T	University of Exeter Business School	United Kingdom	18	324	11	11	18.00	0	2	2	12	16	18
31	Del Chiappa, G	University of Sassari	Italy	18	299	11	10	16.61	0	2	4	10	12	17
32	Cvelbar, LK	University of Ljubljana	Slovenia	18	290	14	10	16.11	0	1	4	11	14	17
33	Cooper, CP	Oxford Brookes University	United Kingdom	17	666	6	12	39.18	2	5	8	13	14	15
34	Mihalic, T	University of Ljubljana	Slovenia	17	661	15	9	38.88	2	4	5	9	11	14
35	Josiassen, A	Copenhagen Business School	Denmark	17	371	16	11	21.82	0	2	5	11	15	16
36	Garrod, B	Swansea University	United Kingdom	16	805	11	11	50.31	1	7	8	11	12	15
37	Witt, SF	University of Surrey	United Kingdom	16	776	19	15	48.50	2	5	9	15	15	16
38	Jacobsen, JKS	University of Stavanger	Norway	16	659	13	9	41.19	2	5	8	9	13	15
39	Prebensen, NK	University College of South-East Norway	Norway	16	652	25	10	40.75	4	5	8	10	11	15
40	Sainaghi, R	IULM University	Italy	16	541	56	11	33.81	0	4	8	12	15	16
41	Nawijn, J	Breda University of Applied Sciences	Netherlands	16	442	30	11	27.63	0	3	7	12	15	16
42	Ogaard, T	University of Stavanger	Norway	16	290	12	7	18.13	0	2	4	7	10	16
43	Taheri, B	Heriot-Watt University	United Kingdom	16	244	26	7	15.25	0	0	5	6	11	12
44	Pechlaner, H	Catholic University of Eichstätt – Ingolstadt	Germany	16	214	14	8	13.38	0	1	3	8	11	16
45	Gueguen, N	University of Bretagne-Sud	France	16	165	7	7	10.31	0	0	3	5	9	15
46	Jacob, C	University of Bretagne-Sud	France	16	165	7	7	10.31	0	0	3	5	9	15
47	Blake, AT	Bournemouth University	United Kingdom	15	758	13	14	50.53	3	4	11	14	14	15
48	Andriotis, K	University of London	United Kingdom	15	425	19	10	28.33	0	3	5	11	14	14
49	Beritelli, P	University of St. Gallen	Switzerland	15	389	19	10	25.93	1	2	4	10	10	14
50	Peters, M	University of Innsbruck	Austria	15	284	12	8	18.93	0	2	5	8	11	15

Table 1.

Most productive European authors in ‘tourism, leisure and hospitality’ according to the WoS.

Notes: R: ranking; TP: total papers; TC: total citations; SC: self-citations; H: h-index; C/P: citations per paper: ≥100, ≥50, ≥25, ≥10, ≥5, ≥1: number of documents with at least 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1 citation(s). Source: Web of Science, June 2022.

As for the h-index, it is observed that all of the authors in Table 1 obtain at least an h-index of 7, with 39 of the 50 authors obtaining a two-digit h-index. Only three authors, Dimitrios Buhalis, Stefan Gossling and Bill Bramwell (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) obtain an h-index of 20 or above. As for authors with papers receiving 100 or more citations, we observe how Dimitros Buhalis again leads the ranking, obtaining more than twice the number of his immediate pursuers. In this regard, only 29 authors have a paper with 100 or more citations, while 46 have papers with at least 50 citations. Finally, 17 authors managed to have all their documents cited at least once, while another 20 managed to have all their documents except one cited.

Concerning the institutions represented in Table 1, we observe that the authors are distributed among 36 universities. Surrey is the University with the highest representation, with a total of six authors, followed by Bournemouth University, with four. We find another six institutions (Oxford Brookes, University, Heriot-Watt University, University of Ljubljana, University of Stavanger, University of St. Gallen and University of Bretagne-Sud) with two authors in the ranking. In terms of countries, only 14 are represented in the table. The United Kingdom clearly leads with 23 authors followed at some distance by Norway and Austria with six and four representatives, respectively.

Another interesting analysis involves graphically visualising the co-authorship relationships that occur among the most influential European authors, as well as between them and the most productive and influential authors around the world. Figure 2 presents a depiction of the main 100 connections between authors, considering a threshold of at least 15 documents.

Figure 2.

Co-authorship with a citation threshold of 15 and the 100 most representative co-citation connections. Source: VOSviewer software.

Figure 2 shows a depiction of co-authoring among the main influential European authors publishing in the TLH field. Figure 2 shows 11 groups of authors working together, although there are also relationships between the groups. The group with the largest volume of authors (in red) has nine representatives, including Stefan Gossling, Scott Cohen and Xavier Font, as well as New Zealander C. Michael Hall, who appears among the authors who have published more documents in this field worldwide [1]. The second most important group (in green) has eight authors, focused on the figures of Haiyan Song Scott McCbe and Levent Altinay. The third group in terms of importance (in dark blue) also has eight authors, with Larry Dwyer standing out. The remaining eight clusters are smaller, although we can see that most are headed by prominent authors in the TLH field, such as Albert Assaf, Sara Dolnicar, Dimitros Buhalis, Juan Gabriel Brida and Richard W. Butler, Richard W. Butler and Stephen John Page. Thus, we find that the most prominent European authors work closely with the most prominent and influential authors in the field worldwide. Lastly, and with some exceptions, it can be observed (Figure 2 and Table 1) that the results between the analysis performed considering fractional counting (VOSviewer software) and full counting (WoS) are similar.

3.2 Most productive institutions

The aim of this section is to determine the 50 European institutions that have published the most and their bibliographic coupling, together with their position in the ARWU (2021) and QS (2021). This analysis responds to RQ2.

Surrey and Bournemouth universities, both in the UK, are the most influential and productive institutions. In fact, six of the 50 most productive European authors are affiliated with the former institution, and four with the latter. Just seven institutions, five from the UK and the remaining two from Spain, have produced more than 100 documents. In terms of number of citations, the University of Balearic Islands (Spain) follows the two institutions mentioned above, although the citations obtained by the following institutions are also noteworthy: Sheffield Hallam University, University of Nottingham and University of Westminster of the United Kingdom and University of Valencia of Spain. Despite having a lower number of publications, they are placed in positions 4, 5, 7 and 8 if Table 2 is ranked by number of citations.

R	Institution	Country	TP	TC	SC	H	C/P	≥100	≥50	≥25	≥10	≥5	≥1	ARWU 2019	QS 2020
1	University of Surrey	UK	273	11,187	343	58	40.98	30	71	119	179	216	257	301–400	274
2	Bournemouth University	UK	241	7189	231	41	29.83	12	34	75	143	173	222	—	701–750
3	University of Balearic Islands	Spain	117	3437	123	31	29.38	11	21	39	68	91	112	501–600	—
4	Leeds Beckett University	UK	111	2337	81	28	21.05	4	9	31	61	79	98	101–150	—
5	Oxford Brookes University	UK	107	2235	60	26	20.89	4	11	28	55	70	102	—	376
6	University of Strathclyde	UK	103	2667	93	32	25.89	2	14	38	67	82	100	501–600	296
7	University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria	Spain	101	2263	102	25	22.41	3	17	25	42	70	92	—	—
8	University of Nottingham	UK	97	2909	64	31	29.99	7	20	36	60	75	93	101–150	96
9	University of Alicante	Spain	97	1859	64	25	19.16	1	11	25	46	68	88	801–900	701–750
10	University of Stavanger	Norway	81	1652	1595	21	20.40	3	8	16	38	62	79	—	—
11	University of Oulu	Finland	69	1779	87	23	25.78	2	8	22	40	53	68	501–600	374
12	Sheffield Hallam University	UK	68	2768	75	27	40.71	7	17	29	46	57	64	—	801–1000
13	University do Algarve	Portugal	68	907	51	18	13.34	0	2	12	32	46	58	—	—
14	University of London	UK	66	2004	28	24	30.36	3	12	24	41	52	64	—	—
15	Wageningen University Research	Netherlands	66	1173	41	17	17.77	2	4	12	37	46	53	101–150	125
16	University of Malaga	Spain	66	1051	42	18	15.92	1	6	12	33	44	64	801–900	—
17	Manchester Metropolitan University	UK	66	923	27	19	13.98	0	4	10	30	46	64	—	751–800
18	NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences	Netherlands	63	1624	98	21	25.78	3	8	18	38	48	61	—	—
19	Free University of Bozen Bolzano	Italy	61	1062	66	18	17.41	2	5	13	31	41	58	701–800	—
20	University of Ljubljana	Slovenia	59	1710	44	17	28.98	5	8	13	25	38	53	401–500	591–600
21	University of Valencia	Spain	56	2413	22	19	43.09	5	9	15	25	44	55	401–500	581–590
22	Linnaeus University	Sweden	54	1654	59	21	30.63	4	8	17	33	36	49	—	—
23	University of Plymouth	UK	53	1232	17	19	23.25	3	4	11	32	40	46	801–900	651–700
24	University of Canterbury	UK	52	1876	52	24	36.08	4	10	24	36	41	52	401–500	227
25	University of Girona	Spain	52	913	29	18	17.56	0	4	11	28	39	47	—	—
26	University of Westminster	UK	50	2405	13	19	48.10	4	9	15	24	29	46	—	651–700
27	Middlesex University	UK	49	742	29	15	15.14	0	4	8	23	37	46	901–1000	801–1000
28	University of Innsbruck	Austria	48	1281	26	20	26.69	2	10	19	30	39	48	201–300	266
29	University of Lisboa	Portugal	48	1182	32	18	24.63	2	6	16	24	32	43	—	—
30	University of Eastern Finland	Finland	48	899	32	17	18.73	2	4	12	27	32	42	401–500	498
31	University of Barcelona	Spain	48	859	26	17	17.90	1	5	12	24	30	43	151–200	165
32	Lund University	Sweden	47	1595	38	22	33.94	2	9	21	34	35	46	101–150	92
33	The Arctic University of Norway	Norway	45	1045	43	17	23.22	4	7	11	24	30	40	—	389
34	University of Gothenburg	Sweden	45	956	23	15	21.24	3	8	11	23	28	39	101–150	256
35	University of Aveiro	Portugal	44	940	39	17	21.36	1	5	15	21	30	40	401–500	551–560
36	Cardiff Metropolitan University	UK	44	886	14	16	20.14	1	4	11	25	36	41	—	—
37	Mid Sweden University	Sweden	44	744	28	15	16.91	0	4	10	19	29	41	—	—
38	University of Exeter	UK	42	1452	22	16	34.57	5	8	14	28	34	40	151–200	163
39	University of Seville	Spain	42	595	15	14	14.17	0	2	9	18	30	39	501–600	601–650
40	Tilburg University	Netherlands	41	1690	14	21	41.22	5	12	18	23	28	37	501–600	371
41	University of Brighton	UK	41	1600	10	19	39.02	5	8	13	26	33	40	—	801–1000
42	Erasmus University Rotterdam	Netherlands	41	1588	4	20	38.73	4	13	20	31	37	39	79	183
43	University of Bologna	Italy	40	548	21	13	13.70	0	1	10	14	26	37	177	201–300
44	University of Sassari	Italy	38	656	15	15	17.26	0	4	10	20	24	35	801–900	—
45	Aalborg University	Denmark	38	522	14	14	13.74	0	1	5	21	27	35	201–300	324
46	University Institute of Lisbon	Portugal	38	408	15	10	10.74	0	1	4	13	25	36	151–200	338
47	University of Granada	Spain	37	570	25	15	15.41	1	2	6	17	24	35	201–300	511–520
48	Edinburgh Napier University	UK	36	755	30	14	20.97	1	3	5	18	30	36	32	20
49	Cardiff University	UK	36	717	12	16	19.92	1	5	8	20	27	29	101–150	154
50	Modul University Vienna	Austria	36	601	11	12	16.69	1	2	7	17	29	35	—	—

Table 2.

Most productive European institutions in ‘tourism, leisure and hospitality’ according to the WoS.

Notes: R: ranking; TP: total papers; TC: total citations; SC: self-citations; H: h-index; C/P: citations per paper: ≥100, ≥50, ≥25, ≥10, ≥5, ≥1: number of documents with at least 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1 citation(s); ARWU 2019: Academic Ranking of World Universities, 2011; QS 2021: Quacquarelli Symonds World University Ranking, 2020. Source: Web of Science, June 2022.

As for the h-index, we observe that all the institutions in Table 2 obtain at least an h-index of 10, although 20 of the 50 institutions obtain one of 20 or higher. As for those institutions with papers receiving 100 or more citations, we observe that the University of Surrey once again leads the way, with almost three times as many publications as its immediate pursuers. Concerning this, 40 institutions have at least one paper with 100 or more citations. These numbers improve if we count institutions with papers receiving 50 or more citations since in this case they all meet this criterion. Finally, only three institutions have had all of their papers cited at least once: the University of Canterbury, the University of Innsbruck and Edinburgh Napier University.

With regards to the countries represented in Table 2, we see that the 50 institutions are distributed among 11 European countries. The United Kingdom is the most represented country, with a total of 18 institutions, followed by Spain, with nine, and in third place the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden, with four institutions each.

As shown in Table 2, Edinburgh Napier University is the best institution ranked in the ARWU top 100, out of the 32 European institutions ranked in it. On the other hand, only three are ranked in the top 100 of the QS ranking, with Edinburgh Napier University also occupying the top position in this list (20). In total, 34 of these universities are represented in the QS ranking.

Another interesting analysis consists of graphically visualising the coupling bibliometric between main institutions. This is undertaken through the technique of bibliographic coupling. Figure 3 presents a depiction of the main 100 connections between authors, considering a threshold of at least 25 documents.

Figure 3.

Bibliographic coupling with a citation threshold of 25 and the 100 most representative co-citation connections. Source: VOSviewer software.

Figure 3 contains three main nodes and two secondary nodes. The main node, in red, comprises 23 institutions, among which the University of Surrey and Bournemouth University stand out. We also observe that most of these institutions are in the United Kingdom. The second most important node, in green, is formed by 21 institutions, many of them belonging to northern European countries, such as Finland, Iceland and Sweden. The third node in importance, in blue, includes 20 institutions, most of them Spanish. The two secondary nodes are headed by the University of Ljubljana and the University of London, respectively. Figure 2 shows how collaborations between institutions usually take place between areas that are geographically close to one another, although the two leading institutions, University of Surrey and Bournemouth University, maintain important connections with the rest of the nodes as well. Finally, and with some exceptions, it can be observed (Figure 3 and Table 2) that the results between the analysis performed considering full counting and the fractional counting are similar.

3.3 Most productive countries

To address RQ3, in this section, we analyse the 30 European countries that have published the most and the bibliographic coupling between them.

The countries that have published the most and that have got the largest volume of citations, in the TLH field, are the UK and Spain, while only 14 countries have produced 100 documents or more. Analysing countries by number of citations, the top 10 ranking does not change substantially with respect to that referring to number of documents. The only difference is Finland being replaced in the top 10 by Denmark. Regarding the h-index, 23 countries in Table 3 have a two-digit h-index, the UK being the only country with three digits.

R	Country	TP	TC	S/C	H	C/P	≥100	≥50	≥25	≥10	≥5	≥1	Pop	TP/Pop	TC/Pop
1	UK	2298	66,354	5752	114	28.87	145	371	727	1314	1689	2151	66.04	34.80	1004.75
2	Spain	1065	25,240	2210	69	23.70	44	129	273	517	742	983	46.72	22.80	540.24
3	Italy	418	7465	560	45	17.86	8	40	93	194	276	386	60.59	6.90	123.21
4	Netherlands	356	9434	391	48	26.50	23	47	99	200	272	335	17.08	20.84	552.34
5	Norway	334	6945	432	43	20.79	14	33	72	167	239	323	5.26	63.52	1320.84
6	Sweden	275	5486	291	41	19.95	8	31	67	135	178	251	10.00	27.51	548.87
7	Portugal	270	4085	235	35	15.13	3	15	57	105	171	244	10.31	26.19	396.22
8	Austria	218	4224	190	37	19.38	3	22	55	122	164	210	8.77	24.85	481.48
9	Finland	203	3898	219	33	19.20	5	17	48	122	164	190	5.50	36.89	708.34
10	Germany	202	4223	85	38	20.91	4	19	57	113	149	191	82.79	2.44	51.01
11	France	198	3881	68	31	19.60	8	16	42	85	133	180	66.99	2.96	57.93
12	Switzerland	169	3072	73	29	18.18	3	14	38	87	121	158	8.42	20.07	364.85
13	Denmark	149	4275	104	34	28.69	8	20	45	93	118	142	5.75	25.92	743.61
14	Greece	138	3095	76	29	22.43	5	12	38	87	107	133	10.77	12.81	287.37
15	Poland	83	990	36	15	11.93	2	3	9	25	42	67	38.43	2.16	25.76
16	Slovenia	79	1997	56	20	25.28	5	9	18	33	50	71	2.07	38.24	966.60
17	Belgium	66	1669	18	20	25.29	5	10	18	38	48	63	11.35	5.81	147.05
18	Cyprus	54	1530	25	20	28.33	3	9	17	32	35	51	0.85	63.17	1789.89
19	Iceland	45	554	71	14	12.31	0	1	6	20	30	42	0.34	133.00	1637.36
20	Croatia	42	526	19	10	12.52	0	3	5	12	24	40	4.15	10.11	126.62
21	Serbia	39	286	12	10	7.33	0	0	3	11	20	33	7.02	5.55	40.73
22	Hungary	27	295	11	10	10.93	0	1	2	11	21	26	9.80	2.76	30.11
23	Russia	26	155	4	8	5.96	0	0	1	4	12	23	144.50	0.18	1.07
24	Czech Republic	18	295	2	8	16.39	1	2	2	7	12	17	10.58	1.70	27.88
25	Estonia	17	356	7	10	20.94	1	2	3	10	14	16	1.32	12.92	270.52
26	Bulgaria	17	202	12	7	11.88	0	0	2	5	10	17	7.10	2.39	28.44
27	Romania	13	106	1	6	8.15	0	0	2	4	8	12	19.64	0.66	5.40
28	Slovakia	12	223	2	8	18.58	0	0	4	8	8	10	5.44	2.21	41.03
29	Lithuania	8	192	2	4	24.00	1	1	1	3	4	8	2.85	2.81	67.42
30	Malta	7	99	0	4	14.14	0	1	1	1	3	5	0.46	15.21	215.08

Table 3.

Most productive European countries in ‘tourism, leisure and hospitality’ according to the WoS.

Notes: R: ranking; TP: total papers; TC: total citations; SC: self-citations; H: h-index; C/P: citations per paper: ≥100, ≥50, ≥25, ≥10, ≥5, ≥1: number of documents with at least 100, 50, 25, 10, 5 and 1 citation(s); Pop: population in millions of inhabitants; TP/Pop: documents by inhabitants, in millions; TC/Pop: citations per inhabitants, in millions. Source: Web of Science, June 2022.

As for those countries where institutions have had papers with at least 100 citations, we observe that the UK again leads the ranking, obtaining more than three times as many publications as its immediate pursuers. In this regard, 21 countries have at least one paper with 100 or more citations. These numbers increase if we analyse countries with papers that have received 50 or more citations, since 25 meet this criterion. Finally, only Bulgaria and Lithuania have had all their works cited.

If we analyse productivity per million inhabitants, we see that the ranking changes substantially, since in this case it is led by Iceland, Norway and Cyprus, both in terms of number of citations and documents per million inhabitants, although in a different order. It is notable that the UK continues to hold a privileged position among the countries that receive the largest volume of citations per million inhabitants, despite being the fourth country with the highest number of inhabitants in the previous table.

3.4 Main research topics

Next, and responding to RQ4, in Figure 4, we have analysed a chronological evolution of the main research topics. Figure 4 depicts the main 100 connections between authors, considering a threshold of 25 documents.

Figure 4.

Co-occurrence of author keywords with a citation threshold of 25 and the 100 most representative co-citation connections. Source: VOSviewer software.

Figure 4 shows the main keywords that have been used in the TLH field since 2012. The most prominent keyword is ‘tourism’ (in green), and it seems that out of all documents considered in the analysis, those containing it have been published mainly between the years 2012 and 2013.

The next most dominant keyword is ‘hotel’ (in orange). And thus, out of all the documents included in the analysis, those containing ‘hotel’ have been published mainly in 2014. The same can be commented for the keyword ‘leisure’ (yellow). On the other hand, most keywords related to sustainable development started to garner interest after 2014. The figure shows how topics related to cultural tourism and tourism heritage were a trending topic prior to 2010. Topics related to gender studies, tourism development and its impacts, and other topics related to tourist behaviour stood out between 2011 and 2013. Finally, from 2014 onwards, the main topics addressed have been hospitality, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, social media, climate change and rural tourism. Therefore, the topics connected to social media, and the impacts of tourism on destinations, especially due to climate change and the problems of overtourism, will offer important opportunities in future [27].

4. Conclusions

This chapter undertakes a bibliometric analysis and endeavours to delineate the intellectual and conceptual framework of research in Europe pertaining to tourism and hospitality since 1969. Our study complements previous works such as those of Mulet et al. [2] and adopts a comprehensive approach utilising bibliometric methods to scrutinise the trajectory of research from 1969 to 2021. The employed methodology incorporates bibliometric techniques, including productivity measures and graphical mapping, to assess prominent authors, their co-authorship relationships, noteworthy institutions and countries and the evolution of research themes within this domain.

The study presented a bibliometric analysis in the TLH field, of researchers from European institutions. The objectives outlined have been achieved. Regarding the first research question, the 50 most productive authors have been analysed, as well as their citation structure. Dimitrios Buhalis is the most prominent author, holding the highest h-index, the major number of citations and citations per document. The second most productive author is Stefan Gossling. The main topics addressed by the most cited documents by the most productive authors coincide with the most used keywords. The number of authors affiliated with UK institutions is much higher than authors affiliated with other countries’ institutions. Furthermore, the co-authorship analysis shows how the most prominent European authors in the TLH field closely collaborate with the most prominent and influential authors worldwide [1].

Productivity and relational measures (bibliometric techniques) have allowed us to determine the 50 most productive institutions, and together with their position in ARWU and QS rankings, RQ2 has been responded to. Out of the five most productive universities, 18 are based in the UK, while the rest are distributed among the other 10 countries. In fact, the two most productive universities are in the UK (Surrey and Bournemouth). Only 32 of the 50 most productive universities appear in the ARWU ranking, while 34 were in the QS ranking. The highest-rated institution in both rankings is Edinburgh Napier University.

Regarding the third research question (RQ3), the 30 most productive countries have been analysed. The UK is the top country, followed by Spain. Finally, as far as RQ4 is concerned, we have analysed the most prominent research topics in this field. Results show that social media and climate change will provide great potential opportunities for research.

As all studies, this also has limitations. The first limitation refers to the database used. WoS covers more than 75 million records in the main collection [28], while other databases, such as Google Scholar, cover more than 400 million records [29]. This lack of coverage of WoS causes a large part of the academic literature to be excluded from its records, especially that advocates the epistemologies and worldviews of the Global South [30]. Another limitation of WoS database is that it collects the records based on the full counting method. To solve this limitation, it has also been considered fractional counting through VOSviewer software. The last limitation regards the analysed field cross, which means that some documents published in TLH were published in other research fields [20].

Still acknowledging the above-mentioned limitations, the study is sound and rigorous enough, and it offers a perspective of the state of the art of TLH research. This study increases the recent literature of documents that analyse the evolution of accomplishments, results and trends of research fields considering long periods of time. To identify the evolution of the main addressed topics helps to determine intellectual connections in the analysed field [31, 32]. In this respect, the depiction of intellectual connections helps to create new theories as well as further develop the existing ones, providing a new vision of what scientific research directions may take in the near future [33]. Secondly, the bibliometric overview presents a full picture of the TLH field allowing academics to focus on areas, providing new knowledge to the existing literature [34]. Thirdly, the results of the study help to identify those authors, institutions and countries offering major potential to share and develop research with them [35]. Fourthly, the study covers a long-time scope, which allows academics to get a full picture and its evolution of the addressed field. Finally, with the aim of providing knowledge about the evolution and research trends in the TLH field, the citation patterns have been analysed. This analysis offers a good starting point for new studies in other fields, also considering different bibliometric perspectives.

Appendix

Title	Topic	Author(s)	Journal/conference	Year
Competitiveness in the tourism sector: a bibliometric analysis	Competitiveness	Estevao, C.; Costa, C.; Fernandes, C.	J. of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics	2019
Bibliometric visualisation: An application in tourism crisis and disaster management research	Crisis	Jiang, Y.W.; Ritchie, B.W. Benckendorff, P.	Current Issues in Tourism	2019
Tourism and its economic impact: A literature review using bibliometric tools	Economics	Comerio, N.; Strozzi, F.	Tourism Economics	2019
Food and gastronomy research in tourism and hospitality: A bibliometric analysis	Gastronomy	Okumus, B.; Koseoglu, M.A.; Ma, F.	International J. of Hospitality Management	2018
30 years of contemporary hospitality management uncovering the bibliometrics and topical trends	Hospitality Management	Ali, F.; Park, E.; Kwon, J.; Chae, B.	International J. of Contemporary Hospitality Management	2019
Forty-three years journey of tourism recreation research: A bibliometric analysis	Journal	Vishwakarma, P.; Mukherjee, S.	Tourism Recreation Research	2019
Twenty-five years of the journal of travel & tourism marketing: A bibliometric ranking	Journal	Mulet-Forteza, C.; Martorell-Cunill, O.; Merigó, J.M.; Genovart-Balaguer, J.; Mauleon-Mendez, E.	J. of Travel & Tourism Marketing	2018
Tourism research in the new millennium: A bibliometric review of literature in tourism and hospitality research	Journal	Strandberg, C.; Nath, A.; Hemmatdar, H.; Jahwash, M.	Tourism and Hospitality Research	2018
Thirty-fifth anniversary of the international journal of hospitality management: A bibliometric overview	Journal	Cunill, O.M.; Salva, A.S.; Gonzalez, L.O.; Mulet-Forteza, C.	International J. of Hospitality Management	2019
Twenty years of tourism geographies: A bibliometric overview	Journal	Merigó, J.M.; Mulet-Forteza, C.; Valencia, C.; Lew, A.A.	Tourism Geographies	2019
Religious tourism and pilgrimage: Bibliometric overview	Religious	Duran-Sanchez, A.; Alvarez-Garcia, J.; del Rio-Rama, M.D.; Oliveira, C.	Religions	2018
Quality in tourism literature: A bibliometric review	Research Quality	Garrigos-Simon, F.J.; Narangajavana-Kaosiri, Y.; Narangajavana, Y.	Sustainability	2019
A bibliometric analysis of knowledge development in smart tourism research	Social Media	Johnson, A.G.; Samakovlis, I.	J. of Hospitality and Tourism Technology	2019
A bibliometric analysis of social media in hospitality and tourism research	Social Media	Nusair, K.; Butt, I.; Nikhashemi, S.R.	International J. of Contemporary Hospitality Management	2019
A bibliometric analysis of trust in the field of hospitality and tourism	Trust	Palácios, H; de Almeida, MH; Sousa, MJ	International J. of Hospitality Management	2021
Mapping tourism and hospitality research on ICT: A bibliometric and scientific approach	ICT	Molina-Collado, A; Gómez-Rico, M; Sigala, M; Molina, MV; Aranda, E; Salinero, Y	Information Technology and Tourism	2022
Using bibliometric methods to shed light on the concept of sustainable tourism	Sustainable Tourism	Serrano, L.; Sianes, A.; Ariza-Montes, A.	Sustainability	2019
Sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm: A bibliometric analysis	Sustainable Tourism	Della Corte, V.; Del Gaudio, G.; Sepe, F.; Sciarelli, F.	Sustainability	2019
Tourism research on sustainability: A bibliometric analysis	Sustainable Tourism	Ninerola, A.; Sanchez-Rebull, M.V.; Hernandez-Lara, A.B.	Sustainability	2019
Sustainable tourism in sensitive areas: Bibliometric characterisation and content analysis of specialised literature	Sustainable Tourism	Sanchez-Canizares, S.M.; Castillo-Canalejo, A.M.; Cabeza-Ramirez, L.J.	Sustainability	2018
Sustainability and competitiveness in the tourism industry and tourist destinations: A bibliometric study	Sustainable Tourism	Segui-Amortegui, L.;Clemente-Almendros, J.A.; Medina, R.; Gala, M.G.	Sustainability	2019
Tourism and sustainability: A bibliometric and visualisation analysis	Sustainable Tourism	Garrigos-Simon, F.J.; Narangajavana-Kaosiri, Y.; Lengua-Lengua, I.	Sustainability	2018
A tri-method approach to a review of adventure tourism literature: Bibliometric analysis, content analysis and a quantitative systematic literature review	Tourism Research	Cheng, M.M.; Edwards, D.; Darcy, S.; Redfern, K.	J. of Hospitality & Tourism Research	2018
Cooperation and coauthorship pattern in the field of tourism: Bibliometric and social networks analysis in 14 Brazilian national scientific journals (1990–2016)	Tourism Research	Kohler, A.F.; Digiampietri, L.A.; de Almeida, G.S.	EM Questao	2019
Bibliometric analysis of bibliometric studies on tourism published in Turkey	Tourism Research	Yilmaz, I.	Anais Brasileiros de Estudos Turisticos-ABET	2019
#10yearschallenge: How co-creation permeated tourism research. A bibliometric analysis	Tourism Research	Tregua, M.; D’Auria, A.; Costin, H.	European J. of Tourism Research	2020
Bibliometric analysis of tourism research on the north coast of Honduras between 1988 and 2018	Tourism Research	Ramos-Zúniga, T.V.; Chávez-Dagostino, R.M.	LiminaR	2019
Bibliometric analysis of tourism research on the City of Girona	Tourism Research	Meneguel, C.R.D.; Rubio, S.P.; Mundet, L.	Rosa Dos Ventos-Turismo e Hospitalidade	2019
Tourism and photography: A bibliometric study of using image analysis methodologies in tourism research	Tourism Research	Godoy, K. E.; Leite, I.	LiminaR	2019
Bibliometric analysis of tourism research for the period 2007–2016	Tourism Research	Guzeller, C.O.; Celiker, N.	Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research-AHTR	2018
Bibliometric analysis of the Minority Sports Tourism Research in Yunnan	Tourism Research	Zhou, Y.; Zhu, J.	Proceedings of ERSS	2018
A bibliometric research in the tourism, leisure and hospitality fields	Tourism Research	Mulet-Forteza, C.; Genovart-Balaguer, J.; Mauleon-Mendez, E.; Merigó, J.M.	J. of Business Research	2019
Research progress in tourism, leisure and hospitality in Europe (1969–2018)	Tourism Research	Mulet-Forteza, C., Lunn, E., Merigó, J. M., & Horrach-Rosselló, P.	International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management	2020
Relational bibliometrics for hospitality and tourism research: A best practice guide	Guides	Koseoglu, MA; Yick, MYY; King, B; Arici, HE	Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Marketing	2022
Bibliometric studies in the hospitality and tourism field: A guide for researchers	Guides	Mulet-Forteza, C.; Genovart-Balaguer, J.; Horrach-Rosselló, P.	Contemporary Research Methods in Hospitality and Tourism	2022

Table A1.

Bibliometric documents published in the web of science. Years 2018–2022.

Source: Web of Science, January 2023.