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100+ Tourism Research Topics: Trends and Future Directions

Tourism Research Topics

Tourism research stands at the crossroads of exploration and understanding, dissecting the intricacies of an industry that transcends geographical boundaries. In this blog, we delve into the realm of tourism research topics, examining their importance, trends, popular areas of study, challenges faced by researchers, and the future directions that the field is poised to take.

Key Trends in Tourism Research

Table of Contents

  • Sustainable Tourism

Sustainable tourism has become a cornerstone of research in recent years, reflecting the global shift towards eco-conscious travel. Researchers are delving into the intricate balance between satisfying the wanderlust of tourists and preserving the environment.

Initiatives such as wildlife conservation, eco-friendly accommodations, and community engagement are key focus areas.

Technology in Tourism

The pervasive influence of technology on tourism cannot be overstated. From online booking platforms to virtual reality experiences, researchers are exploring the impact of technology on travel behavior.

Emerging areas of study include the use of artificial intelligence in personalized travel recommendations and the implications of augmented reality for enhancing tourist attractions.

What is the Importance of Tourism Research for Students?

Tourism research holds significant importance for students pursuing studies in various disciplines, including tourism management, hospitality, business, sociology, and environmental studies. Here are some key reasons why tourism research is valuable for students:

Academic Enrichment

  • Increases Understanding: By conducting study on the tourist business, students may increase their comprehension of the intricate relationships between the economic, social, cultural, and environmental facets of the sector.
  • Application of Theoretical information: This increases the practical relevance of their education by giving them the chance to apply the theoretical information they have learned in the classroom to real-world situations.

Skill Development

  • Research Skills: Gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data are just a few of the vital research skills that come from conducting tourist research. These abilities are adaptable and useful in a range of work environments.
  • Communication abilities: Through research papers, presentations, and conversations, students learn how to effectively express their results, which improves both their writing and spoken communication abilities.

Industry Insights

  • Current Trends and Issues: Research allows students to stay abreast of current trends, challenges, and emerging issues in the tourism industry. This awareness is crucial for adapting to the dynamic nature of the field.
  • In-Depth Knowledge: By delving into specific tourism research topics, students gain in-depth knowledge of particular sectors within the industry, positioning themselves as experts in specialized areas.

Career Opportunities

  • Competitive Advantage: Having experience in tourism research can provide students with a competitive advantage in the job market. Employers value candidates who can bring a research-driven perspective to decision-making.
  • Diverse Career Paths: Whether in academia, policy-making, destination management, or market analysis, a background in tourism research opens doors to a variety of career paths within the broader field of tourism and hospitality.

Contributions to Sustainable Practices

  • Environmental and Social Responsibility: Tourism research often focuses on sustainable practices. Students, through their research, can contribute ideas and solutions for promoting responsible tourism, minimizing negative impacts on the environment and local communities.

Global Perspective

  • Cultural Awareness: Researching diverse tourism topics exposes students to various cultures, traditions, and perspectives. This global perspective is crucial in an industry where interactions with people from different backgrounds are common.

Problem-Solving Skills

  • Analytical Thinking: Research involves analyzing complex issues and developing solutions. This cultivates students’ analytical thinking and problem-solving skills, valuable attributes in any professional setting.

Personal Growth

  • Confidence Building: Successfully conducting research and presenting findings builds students’ confidence in their abilities. It empowers them to tackle challenges and approach tasks with a systematic mindset.

In summary, tourism research is a multifaceted learning experience that goes beyond textbooks, providing students with the skills, knowledge, and perspectives needed for a successful and impactful career in the tourism industry or related fields.

100+ Tourism Research Topics: Category Wise

  • Impact of Technology on Travel
  • Cultural Tourism and Heritage Preservation
  • Dark Tourism: Ethics and Motivations
  • Community-Based Tourism for Socioeconomic Development
  • Wildlife Tourism and Conservation
  • Gastronomic Tourism: Culinary Experiences
  • Adventure Tourism: Risk and Reward
  • Medical Tourism: Trends and Implications
  • Religious Tourism and Pilgrimages
  • LGBTQ+ Tourism: Diversity in Travel
  • Film Tourism: Influence on Destination Choice
  • Cruise Tourism: Environmental Impact
  • Rural Tourism: Exploring Off-the-Beaten-Path
  • Urban Tourism and City Planning
  • Educational Tourism: Learning Journeys
  • Wellness Tourism: Mind and Body Retreats
  • Space Tourism: Future Frontiers
  • Luxury Tourism and Experiential Travel
  • Sports Tourism: Events and Impact
  • Volunteer Tourism: Traveling for a Cause
  • Accessible Tourism: Inclusive Travel
  • Niche Tourism: Unusual Destinations
  • The Psychology of Tourist Behavior
  • Destination Marketing and Branding
  • Over-tourism: Challenges and Solutions
  • Impacts of Climate Change on Tourism
  • Cruise Tourism: Cultural Interactions
  • Heritage Tourism Management
  • Tourism and Globalization
  • Impact of Political Instability on Tourism
  • COVID-19 and Tourism: Recovery Strategies
  • Solo Travel: Trends and Safety Concerns
  • E-Tourism: Online Booking Trends
  • Responsible Tourism Practices
  • Agritourism: Farm and Rural Experiences
  • Wildlife Sanctuaries: Balancing Conservation and Tourism
  • Backpacking Culture: Trends and Challenges
  • Tourism Entrepreneurship and Innovation
  • Social Media Influencers in Tourism
  • Geotourism: Exploring Geological Wonders
  • Virtual Reality in Tourism Experiences
  • Tourism Policy and Regulation
  • Sustainable Transportation in Tourism
  • Wellness Retreats: Trends and Impacts
  • Coastal and Marine Tourism
  • Historical Tourism and Interpretation
  • Space-Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Tourism
  • Cross-Cultural Communication in Tourism
  • Slow Tourism: Embracing the Journey
  • Geopolitics and Tourism
  • Adventure Sports Tourism: Risk Management
  • Wellness Tourism: The Spa Industry
  • Religious Festivals and Tourism
  • Volunteer Tourism: Cultural Exchange
  • Impacts of Terrorism on Tourism
  • Tourism and Gender Equality
  • Dark Sky Tourism: Stargazing Adventures
  • Social Justice in Tourism
  • Music Tourism: Festivals and Events
  • Cruise Tourism: Port Infrastructure
  • Urban Regeneration through Tourism
  • Wellness Tourism: Mindful Travel
  • Cultural Appropriation in Tourism
  • Sports Mega-Events and Tourism
  • Virtual Tourism: Exploring from Home
  • Tourism Education and Training
  • Destination Resilience to Crises
  • Adventure Tourism: Environmental Stewardship
  • Slow Food Movement and Culinary Tourism
  • Accessible Tourism: Technology Solutions
  • Adventure Tourism: Cultural Immersion
  • Experiential Learning in Tourism
  • Tourism and Biodiversity Conservation
  • Indigenous Tourism: Empowerment and Challenges
  • Film-Induced Tourism: Pop Culture Impact
  • Ephemeral Tourism Events
  • Adventure Tourism: Cultural Sensitivity
  • Slum Tourism: Ethical Considerations
  • Tourism and Water Conservation
  • Space Tourism: Ethical Considerations
  • Rural Tourism: Community Engagement
  • Wellness Tourism: Mind-Body Connection
  • Tourism and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
  • Adventure Tourism: Extreme Sports
  • The Role of Festivals in Tourism
  • Cultural Tourism and Social Inclusion
  • Wellness Tourism: Alternative Therapies
  • Tourism and Human Rights
  • Heritage Conservation and Tourism
  • Adventure Tourism: Risk Perception
  • Virtual Reality Museums and Tourism
  • Responsible Wildlife Tourism
  • Tourism and Disaster Management
  • Festivals as Cultural Tourism Attractions
  • Adventure Tourism: Psychological Benefits
  • Wellness Tourism: Eco-Friendly Retreats
  • Tourism and Aging Population
  • Culinary Tourism: Fusion Cuisine
  • Adventure Tourism: Cross-Cultural Interactions

Challenges and Opportunities in Tourism Research

Data collection and analysis.

While technology has streamlined data collection, challenges persist in ensuring data accuracy and relevance. Researchers are exploring advanced methodologies, such as big data analytics and machine learning, to overcome these hurdles and derive meaningful insights.

Globalization and Tourism

The globalization of the tourism industry poses both challenges and opportunities. Researchers are scrutinizing the impact of global trends on local economies, cultural identities, and the environment. Striking a balance between global and local interests is a complex task that requires careful consideration.

Future Directions in Tourism Research

Emerging tourism destinations.

The landscape of tourist destinations is ever-evolving. Researchers are turning their attention to emerging destinations, investigating the factors that contribute to their rise and the implications for the broader tourism industry. 

This includes understanding the appeal of off-the-beaten-path locations and the potential challenges associated with their sudden popularity.

Post-Pandemic Tourism

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the tourism industry in unprecedented ways. Researchers are exploring the long-term effects of the pandemic on travel behavior, destination preferences, and the overall structure of the tourism sector. 

Strategies for recovery and resilience are also under the microscope as the industry adapts to the new normal.

Resources for Tourism Research Topics

  • Academic Journals and Publications: Leading academic journals in tourism research, such as the “Journal of Sustainable Tourism” and the “Annals of Tourism Research,” provide a wealth of knowledge for researchers. These publications cover a wide array of topics, from sustainable practices to cultural tourism.
  • Conferences and Events: Attending conferences and events, such as the “International Conference on Tourism Research” and the “World Tourism Forum,” offers researchers the opportunity to engage with peers, present their work, and stay abreast of the latest developments in the field.
  • Online Databases and Research Platforms: Online databases, including Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and Tourism Management Database , provide access to a vast repository of research articles, theses, and reports. These platforms facilitate collaboration and information exchange among researchers.

In conclusion, the landscape of tourism research topics is vast and dynamic, reflecting the multifaceted nature of the tourism industry. As researchers continue to explore sustainable practices, emerging trends, and the post-pandemic landscape, the importance of their work cannot be overstated. 

By navigating the challenges and embracing the opportunities presented, tourism researchers contribute to a more informed and resilient industry, ensuring that the joy of travel remains accessible for generations to come.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, sustainability in hospitality and tourism: a review of key research topics from 1994 to 2020.

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

ISSN : 0959-6119

Article publication date: 23 March 2022

Issue publication date: 26 July 2022

The purpose of this study is to examine the scientific research related to sustainability in hospitality and tourism from 1994 to 2020 by conducting bibliometric and science mapping analyses and to discuss the implications for prospective research opportunities.

Design/methodology/approach

Keyword co-occurrences with 2,980 published papers collected from the Web of Science (Social Science Citation Index and Emerging Sources Citation Index) were used for the bibliometric-based analysis. The authors use SciMAT software which offers relevant outputs, such as research themes and graphical outputs (strategic diagrams, cluster networks and science mapping representing the temporal evolution of the themes).

The findings show that biodiversity conservation, sustainable attitudes, climate change, protected areas, satisfaction and environmental management were the focal motor-themes in the studied periods. Additionally, four areas for future investigation are identified and discussed: sustainable behavior and environmental sustainability; consumption, demand and economic growth; tourism development and strategies; and rural tourism, poverty, ethics and education.

Research limitations/implications

This analysis shows insightful results processing a high number of published documents. However, the authors recommend further research focused on qualitative literature review for each critical topic.

Originality/value

The authors are unaware of analogous, completed and recent work about sustainability in hospitality and tourism. The authors believe this article is of great value to academics and practitioners because it synthesizes and disseminates the research topic while providing an outstanding basis for identifying research opportunities.

  • Bibliometric analysis
  • Science mapping analysis
  • Sustainability
  • Hospitality

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the University of Castilla-La Mancha for the financial support provided for this research under the Call for Research Groups (Reference: 2021-GRIN-31010), and to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the 2019 Call for R&D Projects (Project reference number: PID2019-105726RB-I00).

Molina-Collado, A. , Santos-Vijande, M.L. , Gómez-Rico, M. and Madera, J.M. (2022), "Sustainability in hospitality and tourism: a review of key research topics from 1994 to 2020", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management , Vol. 34 No. 8, pp. 3029-3064. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-10-2021-1305

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Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research

The paper aims to critically review past and emerging literature to help professionals and researchers alike to better understand, manage and valorize both the tourism impacts and transformational affordance of COVID-19. To achieve this, first, the paper discusses why and how the COVID-19 can be a transformational opportunity by discussing the circumstances and the questions raised by the pandemic. By doing this, the paper identifies the fundamental values, institutions and pre-assumptions that the tourism industry and academia should challenge and break through to advance and reset the research and practice frontiers. The paper continues by discussing the major impacts, behaviours and experiences that three major tourism stakeholders (namely tourism demand, supply and destination management organisations and policy makers) are experiencing during three COVID-19 stages (response, recovery and reset). This provides an overview of the type and scale of the COVID-19 tourism impacts and implications for tourism research.

1. Introduction: Setting the necessity and parameters for tourism COVID-19 research

The COVID-19 (declared as a pandemic by WHO, 12 March 2020) of significantly impacts the global economic, political, socio-cultural systems. Health communication strategies and measures (e.g. social distancing, travel and mobility bans, community lockdowns, stay at home campaigns, self- or mandatory-quarantine, curbs on crowding) have halted global travel, tourism and leisure. Being a highly vulnerable industry to numerous environmental, political, socio-economic risks, tourism is used to and has become resilient in bouncing back ( Novelli, Gussing Burgess, Jones, & Ritchie, 2018 ) from various crises and outbreaks (e.g. terrorism, earthquakes, Ebola, SARS, Zika). However, the nature, the unprecedented circumstances and impacts of the COVID-19, demonstrate signs that this crisis is not only different, but it can have profound and long-term structural and transformational changes to tourism as socio-economic activity and industry. Indeed, the global and huge scale, the multidimensional and interconnected impacts challenging current values and systems and leading to a worldwide recession and depression are the most distinctive characteristics of this pandemic.

COVID-19 tourism impacts will be uneven in space and time, and apart from the human tool, estimates show an enormous and international economic impact: international tourist arrivals are estimated to drop to 78% causing a loss of US$ 1.2 trillion in export revenues from tourism and 120 million direct tourism job cuts representing seven times the impact of September 11, and the largest decline in the history ( UNWTO, 2020 ). Being one of the most important global employer (1 in 10 jobs are directly related to tourism, UNWTO, 2020 ) and the major GDP contributor for several countries, tourism and COVID-19 are the epicenter of all international discussions and economies.

Within the burgeoning industry discussions and research about tourism and COVID-19, there is an unanimous call to see and use the pandemic as a transformative opportunity ( Mair, 2020 ). Industry should not only recover but also reimagine and reform the next normal and economic order ( McKinsey, 2020 ), while researchers should not solely use COVID-19 as another context to replicate existing knowledge for measuring and predicting tourism impacts ( Gössling et al., 2020 , Hall et al., 2020 ). Although such studies are important for managing the pandemic, they do not advance knowledge and/or guide the industry to a step beyond. Moreover, because of the interlinked socio-cultural, economic, psychological and political impacts of COVID-19 of this magnitude, unforeseen trajectories instead of historical trends are expected and the predictive power of ‘old’ explanatory models may not work. Moreover, there is enough evidence to claim that both the tourism industry and research have matured to a good extent providing sufficient knowledge about how to study and effectively: (1) design and implement crisis recovery and response strategies (e.g. McKercher & Chon, 2004 ); (2) build resilience to address future crises ( Hall, Prayag, & Amore, 2017 ). What is still lacking is knowledge about how crisis can foster industry change, how companies can convert this crisis disruption into transformative innovation and how to conduct research that can enable, inform and shape the rethinking and resetting of a next normal.

Crises can be a change trigger, but none crisis has been so far a significant transition event in tourism ( Hall et al., 2020 ). Crises have also been used as a political tool to stabilize existing structures and diminish the possibility of collective mobilization ( Masco, 2017 ). As change can be selective and/or optional for the tourism stakeholders (e.g. tourists, operators, destination organisations, policy makers, local communities, employees), the nature and degree of crises-led transformations depend on whether and how these stakeholders are affected by, respond to, recover and reflect on crises. Consequently, to better understand, predict but also inform and shape change, tourism COVID-19 research should provide a deeper examination and understanding of the tourism stakeholders’ (behavioural, cognitive, emotional, psychological and even ideological) drivers, actions and reactions to their COVID-19 impacts. Research should also examine and understand the stakeholders’ lived and perceived COVID-19 experiences as well as their consciousness, mindfulness, capabilities and willingness to understand and act (pro-actively and re-actively) to the pandemic, as all these can equally influence their attitudes, behaviours and change potential.

COVID-19 tourism research should also advance our knowledge for informing, fostering, shaping or even leading such crises-enabled transformations. Otherwise, we will simply experience one crisis after the other ( Lew, 2020 ). Responding to the mushrooming euphoria of COVID-19 tourism related research, Gretzel et al. (2020) also plead for transformative e-tourism research that can shape tourism futures by making value systems, institutional logics, scientific paradigms and technology notions visible and transformable. To achieve scientific paradigm shifts, e-tourism research should embrace historicity, reflexivity, transparency, equity, plurality and creativity ( Gretzel et al., 2020 ). To avoid the bubble of the COVID-19 research orgasm and advance tourism research, others have also suggested to adopt inter-disciplinary ( Wen, Wang, Kozak, Liu, & Hou, 2020 ), multi-disciplinary ( Gössling et al., 2020 , Hall et al., 2020 ) or even anti-disciplinary ( Sigala, 2018 ) research to enable out-of-the-box, creative and flexible thinking that challenges and goes beyond existing pre-assumptions and mindsets.

To address these needs and gaps, this paper aims to critically review past and emerging literature to help professionals and researchers alike to better understand, manage and valorize both the tourism impacts and transformational affordance of COVID-19. To achieve this, first, the paper discusses why and how the COVID-19 can be a transformational opportunity by discussing the circumstances and the questions raised by the pandemic. By doing this, the paper identifies the fundamental values, institutions and pre-assumptions that the tourism industry and academia should challenge and break through to advance and reset the research and practice frontiers. The paper continues by discussing the major impacts, behaviours and experiences that three major tourism stakeholders (namely tourism demand, supply and destination management organisations and policy makers) are experiencing during three COVID-19 stages (response, recovery and reset). This analysis is useful because it provides an overview and understanding of the type and scale of the COVID-19 tourism impacts, while it also demonstrates that the way in which stakeholders and researchers understand, react and behave in each stage may form and set the next (new) normal in the post COVID-19 era. Responding to the call for transformative research, discussions are developed based on the rational that tourism research should go beyond replicating and reconfirming existing knowledge within the COVID-19 context; instead tourism COVID-19 research should see new things and see them differently to inform and guide tourism futures. Hence, the paper suggests potential new research areas and theoretical lenses that can be used for advancing and resetting industry practice and research. The paper does not aim to provide a fully comprehensive and inclusive analysis of all the impacts, theories, topics and tourism stakeholders that COVID-19 tourism research can examine. Instead, it aims to provide practical and theoretical implications on how to better research, understand, manage and transformative valorize COVID-19 tourism impacts.

2. COVID-19 circumstances and tourism: Shifting the research focus to challenge, reset and contradict institutional logics, systems and assumptions

Research investigating, measuring and predicting the COVID-19 tourism impacts is important in order to eliminate ‘casualties’, draft, monitor and improve response strategies (i.e. you cannot manage what you cannot measure). However, research focusing on the features and impacts of crises instead of their structural roots tends to conceal and stabilize the conditions and corollary social structures through which crises are produced ( Barrios, 2017: 151 ). Investigating the real roots of COVID-19 may go beyond the boundaries and scope of tourism research. Yet, the latter needs to look into and challenge the tourism ‘circumstances’ and structures that have enabled and sometimes accelerated the global spread and impact of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the economists downplay the pandemic as a purely natural event originating and operating outside of the economic system ( Nowlin, 2017 ). But, treating COVID-19 as an exogenous shock and phenomenon that has nothing to do with socio-economic structures and values, can perpetuate and strengthen the pandemic roots during the post COVID-era as well as constrain change and transformational processes.

COVID-19 is a crisis of the economized societies rooted in the growth-paradigm ( Ötsch, 2020 ). COVID-19 is also a result of the intersection of broader processes of urbanisation, globalisation, environmental change, agribusiness and contemporary capitalism ( Allen et al., 2017 ). The nature of tourism (requiring traveling) and its evolution and growth paradigms are a significant contributor to such circumstances and the current socio-economic system accelerating the spread and impact of this contagious and infectious virus. Tourism is a result but also responsible for: our highly interconnected and global world; pollution, waste and climate change; global, national and regional economic development and growth; superiority of capitalism values in people’s and business decision-making but also policy and politics formulations. As climate change increases the frequency of pandemics and outbreaks, pandemics are expected to become more common in the future ( World Economic Forum (2019) (2019), 2019 ), which in turn highlights the interwoven nature and vicious circle forces between the biological, physical and socio-economic systems.

Moreover, the economic system and mindset contributing to the COVID-19 has also been guiding and shaping the COVID-19 response and recovery strategies of governments, institutions, businesses and people alike. This can significantly perpetuate and repeat crises as we are treating their symptoms and not their roots. For example, economic priorities for maintaining business continuity and jobs, resume and recovering to the old ‘economic success growth’, have been driving governments’ policies and practices such as: economic support (e.g. subsidies, tax reliefs) to tourism businesses and employees; debates for relaxation of restrictions for re-opening and re-starting economies at the expense of a second way and human lives. Similarly, people have engaged in panic buying and (over)-consumption of online experiences (e.g. virtual entertainment, dining, drinking, traveling) during lock-downs, that demonstrate their persistence, preference and fear of loosing to their ‘consumerism’ traditional lifestyles deemed essential for their success and happiness. Early COVID-19 tourism research also reinforces a similar mindset, e.g. many studies trying to measure the economic impacts of COVID-19 trading them off to socio-cultural and biological impacts, studies aiming to predict and measure when tourists will start traveling again and when we can reach the old tourism targets. As governments race to minimise economic losses, and be the first to reopen borders and (tourism) businesses, and financial markets, investors, cash liquidity and financial survival are equally pressing multinational and small tourism enterprises, they are all also looking for tourism research that can ‘feed’ and ‘reconfirm’ their mindset and help them resume operations based on the old paradigms and business models they are founded. Debates and research are based on trading between economic benefits and losses in exchange of human rights, lives, morals and ethics. There is no discussion why trade-offs are the best methodology and mindset to decide, no one has re-imagined ‘solutions’ enabling co-existence or regenerative forces between these concepts.

Overall, research, education and our socio-economic and political system (which they shape and are shaped by each other), have all framed our mindset on how we research, measure, understand, respond and aim to recover from the COVID-19. Consequently, we have converted COVID-19 from a biological virus contagion to a financial crisis contagion and recently, an economic race to re-build our old financial competitiveness. To avoid such perpetuations, tourism research should assume more responsibility in informing, driving and leading sustainable futures. To that end, COVID-19 tourism research should not be solely seen, conducted and used as a useful tool to help resume old states. Instead, COVID-19 tourism research should also challenge our growth-paradigms and assumptions that have led to the current situation and enable us to reimagine and reset tourism (e.g. Ioannides and Gyimóthy, 2020 , Gössling et al., 2020 , Hall et al., 2020 , Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ). To achieve this, COVID-19 tourism research should criticize ontological and epistemological foundations and assumptions that underpin the current science and growth paradigms ( Brodbeck, 2019 ). It should also deconstruct and challenge the mechanisms and systems that sustain the deleterious unsustainable tourism evolution ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ). But to regenerate and transform tourism and its socio-economic system, tourism research should not only support new ways and perspectives of researching, knowing and evolving. COVID-19 tourism research should also inspire, motivate and inform all tourism stakeholders alike to adopt new ways of being, doing and politicising. For example:

At a macro-level, COVID-19 tourism research should generate dethinking, rethinking and unthinking of pre-assumptions and mindsets including ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ): globalisation as an unstoppable force; neoliberal capitalism as the best system and decision-making tool for organizing and allocating resources; growth as the sole way for development and success. It should also challenge the ‘surveillance capitalism’, whose institutionalisation and normalisation is perceived as inevitable and unstoppable because of forces including ( Zuboff, 2015 ): institutionalised facts (e.g. data collection, analytics and mining); leading tech and disrupting companies being respected and treated as emissaries of a better future solving the “faults of capitalism” (e.g. sharing economy platforms ‘democraticing’ micro-entrepreneurship); and people seeing technologies as a necessity requirement for social and civic participation, securing employment and addressing the increasingly stressful, competitive, and stratified struggle for effective life. The COVID-19 is accelerating the institutionalisation and acceptance of this algorithmic governance, management and society, previously contested as violations of human rights, privacy and laws ( Zysman, 2006 ), but now becoming normalised in the name of health and common good.

Technology is at the core of solutions for combating the COVID-19 and re-opening tourism and the economy (e.g. mobility tracing apps, robotised-AI touchless service delivery, digital health passports and identity controls, social distancing and crowding control technologies, big data for fast and real time decision-making, humanoid robots delivering materials, disinfecting and sterilizing public spaces, detecting or measuring body temperature, providing safety or security), while technology is seen as a panacea to our COVID-19 driven-needs to normalise surveillance, to ensure health and safety, to collect and analyse personal data for fast decision-making. Although COVID-19 tourism research cannot stop these technological advances, it should fight this digital trojan horse from the inside by questioning and resetting their purposes, designs and affordances, interpretations and application ethics. Technologies are constituted by unique affordances, whose development and expression are shaped by the institutional logics in which technologies are designed, implemented, and used ( Zuboff, 2015 ). COVID-19 tourism research could simply investigate and advance our information and technological capabilities to collect, analyse and use (big) data for better knowing, predicting, controlling, and modifying human behavior (e.g. tourists and employees behaviour) as a means to produce revenue and market control ( Zuboff, 2015 ). But such research will simply further support the making of everydayness qua data imprints an intrinsic component of organizational and institutional life and a primary target of commercialization strategies ( Constantiou & Kallinikos, 2015 ). Technologies have always been an enabler, a catalyst of innovation and change, a disruptor of tourism, as well as a tool to build tourism resilience in crisis ( Hall et al., 2017 ). The COVID-19 has further enhanced the role of technologies in the recovery and reimagination of tourism, while it reinforces existing paradigms in the e-tourism evolution. Developmental trends and adoption of smart destinations and tourism services, AI, robotics and other digital advances are now accelerated to combat the COVID-19 tourism implications. COVID-19 tourism research should reimagine and re-shape the purposes, usage and means of such technological advances that significantly form how our societies and economies are being transformed, how tourism is being practiced, managed and evolves with the help and/or because of the COVID-19.

At a micro-level, COVID-19 tourism research should question and reset why tourism is viewed, practiced and managed as a way to ‘escape’, ‘relax’, ‘socialise’, ‘construct identities/status’, ‘learn’ and reward themselves from a routine, unpleasant and meaningless life. Why tourism should be researched and practiced as an escape from a boring life, instead of life being rewarding and meaningful itself? Why people have to travel thousands of miles away from home to ‘learn’ and ‘be happy’? Why companies have to commercialize and commoditize communities, people and their tangible and intangible resources as tourism attractions ‘please’ the tourists’ needs and drive economic development? Tourism paradigms and mindsets like this, have led and intensified crises like COVID-19 and this cannot be sustainable for much longer. Consumerism and tourism should not be seen as the sole way to achieve happiness, self-expression, and (economic) development. COVID-19 tourism research should inspire tourists, businesses and destinations alike to re-imagine and reset new mindsets, frontiers and behaviours such as: how to use and develop tourism to valorize and not consume tourism resources, to generate well-being, sustainability and transformational learning; how to study and practice environmental/sustainable management not as a legal necessity for lobbying and formulating policies, not as marketing tool to build brands’ and people’s identities, not as an expense to be minimized, but as a mindful business investment and personal lifestyle for a responsible future.

Overall, COVID-19 tourism research should not only be the mean to overcome the crisis and resume previously chartered economic growth trajectories. It should lead the refocusing, repurposing, reframing and re-interpretation of research questions, methodologies and outcomes, so that tourism stakeholders can in turn re-direct their actioning, conduct and evolution. To that end, COVID-19 tourism research will be benefited by embedding, adapting, reflecting and expanding the theoretical lenses and perspectives of a much greater plurality of disciplines and constructs to guide and implement research. Transformative (service) research, philosophy, criminology, ethics, law, anthropology, behavioural and religious studies, political science and diplomacy, governance, bioethics, rhetoric. Researching within unchartered waters, COVID-19 tourism research may also need to apply new methodological approaches and tools that are capable to combat roots and not symptoms of tourism crises and use the latter as transformational opportunity to reset research agendas and re-imagine and re-shape unthinkable tourism futures. Due to the newness of the field qualitative approaches such as (cyber)ethnography and the need for urgent, fast and real-time research processes and outcomes, COVID-19 tourism research may also need to intensify and advance “new” methods of (big) data collection, analysis and interpretation/visualization, such as participatory sensing (i.e. using tourists as sensors for data collection).

Paradox research, as a meta-theory and/or methodology, can also be very instrumental for informing and supporting COVID-19 tourism research. Originating in philosophy and psychology (e.g. Aristotle, Confucius, Freud), paradox research (also frequently requiring multi-disciplinarity) has helped to inform, advance and transform management science research ( Schad, Lewis, Raisch, & Smith, 2016 ) and organisations ( Cameron & Quinn, 1988 ) alike. As a meta-theory, paradox research offers a powerful lens for enriching extant theories and fostering theorizing processes in management science, because it provides deeper understanding and conceptualisation of constructs, relationships, and dynamics surrounding organizational tensions. By investigating contradictions between interdependent elements that are seemingly distinct and oppositional, one can better unravel how one element actually informs and defines the another, tied in a web of eternal mutuality. As a methodology, the paradox lens encourages researchers to approach organizational paradoxes paradoxically ( Cameron & Quinn, 1988 ). Incorporating paradox research into COVID-19 research may also be inevitable, as the COVID-19 circumstances, impacts and debates have uncovered and intensified existing paradoxes, but also generated new ones. Paradox research is also paramount to COVID-19 tourism research, if the latter is to become innovative and transformative. These are because (adapted by Schad et al., 2016 ):

  • • Interruptions in socio-economic life can reveal structural contradictions and paradoxes, and by studying and understanding them, one can make the crisis positive and transformative
  • • paradoxes intensify, grow and intensify, as contemporary organizations and their environments become increasingly global, fast-paced, and complex; the evolution and circumstances of tourism and COVID-19 are a strong evidence of a highly interconnected, fast paced and complex world
  • • paradox is a powerful meta-theorizing tool: opposing theoretical views may enable vital insights into persistent and interdependent contradictions, fostering richer, more creative, and more relevant theorizing
  • • paradox identifies and challenges our pre-assumptions: as antinomies, theoretical paradoxes remain perplexing, even paralyzing, when researchers are confined by the past and/or assumptions
  • • paradox help us think creatively and out-of-the box, because contradictions provoke established certainties and tempts untapped creativity

Paradox research is limitedly used within tourism research, but its applicability, versatility and value are shown already in investigating: macro-level tourism and destination management issues ( Williams & Ponsford, 2009 ); business operations ( Sigala, Airey, Jones, & Lockwood, 2004 ) and tourism demand ( Mawby, 2000 ). However, as the present and post COVID-19 era is a fertile ground of persistent and new paradoxes in tourism, tourism researchers should seriously consider adopting a paradox lense. For example, the circumstances of COVID-19 (e.g. stay at home lockdowns, social distancing) have necessitated and accelerated the use of technologies by both tourists (e.g. information about travel restrictions, online crisis communication, online COVID-19 alerts and hygiene measures) and businesses (e.g. online food delivery, virtual dining, virtual wine experiences, festivals/events, virtual visits of museums, destinations). However, persistent ‘paradoxes’ (e.g. increase use of social media and loneliness, democratisation of information accessibility and information darkness, technology and (small) business empowerment/equalizing competition rules) are questioning the effectiveness of such technology solutions and have fuelled debates on whether they are a ‘cure’ or a ‘fertiliser’ and “diffuser’ of the pandemic. Not everyone has access to technology and those that they have do not necessarily have the capabilities and knowledge to effectively use the technology tools and information. The persistent digital divide found in consumers and businesses (which mainly represents a socio-economic divide of citizens and size of businesses), has converted the pandemic to an infodemic (e.g. lack or mis-information, diffusion of fake COVID-19 news and advices, emotional contagion of global depression and mental health) and a tool deepening the economic divide and competitive gap between larger and smaller tourism operators. Digital inequalities in tourists potentiated their vulnerability to COVID-19 (e.g. putting themselves and their loved one in health risk while traveling or willing to travel during and after the COVID-19), while COVID-19 vulnerability potentiate to enlarge the digital inequalities [e.g. those who have the tools and means to easier go through the COVID-19 impacts will also be the only ones who can pay and access virtual tourism experiences, who will be well informed on how, where and when travel and who will be able to afford to travel in the future, as increased (hygiene and technology) operating costs and transportation oligopolies may increase costs of tourism]. Similarly, digital inequalities in tourism businesses potentiate COVID-19 vulnerability (as larger operators that were technology ready and ‘inherited’ by size resilience, were the first and maybe the only ones to be able to virtualise operations and experiences for maintaining business liquidity, surviving, re-opening and recovering post COVID-19), while COVID-19 vulnerability increases digital and economic inequalities in the tourism competitive landscape (e.g. larger companies/destinations which are characterised by greater cash liquidity, know-how, technology readiness and resilience and so, have lower COVID-19 vulnerability, will be the ones to survive and thrive post COVID-19). Paradox research that can investigate such contradictions between the abovementioned distinct and oppositional, but also elements interdependent elements can better define, understand, manage and address their concepts and the dynamics of their web of eternal mutuality.

The COVID-19 fortified and generated many other paradoxes, which are also identifiable at all tourism management levels (macro, meso and micro) and COVID-19 tourism research can investigate for advancing and transforming research. Table 1 provides some ideas for applying such paradoxes in COVID-19 tourism research.

Paradox Research: advancing and transforming COVID-19 tourism research.

ParadoxesExamples of fields for applying paradox research in COVID-19 tourism research
privacy and obscurity
novelty and usefulness
cooperation and competition
global and local
self-focus and other-focus
stability and change
self-preservation and self-actualisation
high-tech and high-touch tourism services and experiences,
profits and purpose

3. COVID19: Dismantling and re-mantling tourism in three stages

It is widely accepted that crisis management needs to be implemented before, during and after a crisis. Table 2 provides an overview of the impacts and implications of COVID-19 on three major stakeholders (tourism demand, tourism operators, destinations and policy makers) under three stages (representing the respond, recovery and restart stage from the pandemic) to incorporate a transformational stage envisioned in the post COVID-19 era. COVID-19 tourism research does not have to address issues in the last stage in order to be transformative. It can equally be transformative if it re-examines ‘existing’ issues and relations but through new theoretical lenses and/or methodological approaches by embedding a plurality of ‘new’ disciplines into the research designs. By doing this, one can significantly unravel unknown issues and dynamics, provide a better explanatory power and understanding of concepts and relations as well as identify and test new ‘remedies’.

COVID-19 and tourism in three stages: major impacts and some ideas for future research.

Respond Stage Recovery stage Restart, reform and reset reimagine
ImpactsResearch fieldsImpactsResearch fieldsImpactsResearch fields
Tourism DemandTourists’ and/or their loved ones affected by COVID-19 and experiencing traumatic tourism experiences Travellers reading and viewing traumatic COVID-19 tourism experiences lived by others (media communication and user-generated content)
Travel restrictions and travel bans
Use of technology for crisis alerts and communication
Panic buying and stockpiling
Experience of trauma on tourists’ travel attitudes, future intentions, decision – making and experiences
Impact of crisis communication on tourists’ perceived risks, decision-making, future travel intentions and service quality evaluations
Impact of fake news and misinformation on tourists’ perceived risks and destination image
Impact of booking restrictions and firms’ cancelation policies on tourists’ attitudes and behaviour towards booking restrictions and booking patterns
Experiencing a new tourism service and experience: Setting new priorities determining tourists’ selection, evaluation of services and consumption behaviour, e.g.: Self-care, safety, hygiene e.g.
Managing the safety and health of tourists and employees
Handling customer communication and requests for:
Ensure business continuity and building resilience Resetting the new business normal
e.g. Tourism Greece #GreecefromHome e.g.#traveltomorrow by UNWTO
World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has launched its new
Visit Portugal “we’re-all-in-this-together” #CantSkipHope social media campaign

3.1. Tourism demand

Tourists have experienced themselves, through their loved ones and/or through the shared experiences of others (e.g. user-generated-content) significant disruptions and health-risks in their travel and bookings plans. The tourists’ experiences and/or exposure to others’ experiences (that are also magnified through the emotional contagion and information diffusion of the social media) can have a significant impact on their travel attitudes, intentions and future behaviours. Psychiatric research investigating the impact of traumatic experiences on people’s life, behaviours and experiences of places and services (e.g. Baxter & Diehl, 1998 ) can provide a useful theoretical lenses for understanding the travel behavior and attitudes of tourists that have been exposed to own or others’ COVID-19 travel trauma. Tourism research has mainly focused on studying how tourists develop their perceived risk and the impacts of the latter on tourists’ decision-making processes, future intentions and segmentation profiles (e.g. Dolnicar, 2005 , Aliperti and Cruz, 2019 , Araña and León, 2008 ). Others have also examined the impact of the tourists’ perception of crisis management preparedness certification on their travel intentions (e.g. Pennington-Gray, Schroeder, Wu, Donohoe, & Cahyanto, 2014 ). Such research is important, as risk perceptions are important for predicting future tourism demand and drafting appropriate recovery strategies ( Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009 ). It is also relevant for COVID-19 tourism research because of the new COVID-19 standards and certification rules that companies are now required to adopt. Research has shown that perceptions of risks may differ between tourists with different origin-country, final destination, age, sex and the typology of travel ( Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009 ). However, the impact of crisis communication and social media on perceived risk has been totally ignored. Some research is done for examining the impact of social media use on tourists’ mental health ( Zheng, Goh, & Wen, 2020 ) and crisis information systems and communication – social media ( Sigala, 2012 , Yu et al., 2020 ), however, given the increasing role and impact of social media on crisis communication and people’s health and risks perceptions, this is an area where more research is granted. As a vaccine for COVID-19 may take long to be developed and travelers may need to live with it, tourism research might benefit from medical and health research investigating how people behave, live and cope with chronic and lifestyle-related diseases (e.g. AIDS).

During lockdowns, people have experienced and become familiar with virtual services and tourism experiences. Research in technology adoption would claim that increased technology familiarity and trialability will increase its adoption. But will this apply for the controversial technologies introduced by COVID-19? Political economy and law research explaining how people react and accept human rights ‘violations’ (e.g. surveillance measures, freedom of speech, lockdowns) under conditions of ‘state of exception’ like terrorism or the COVID-19 ( Carriere, 2019 , Bozzoli and Müller, 2011 , Scheppele, 2003 ) can provide a new lenses for studying adoption of the COVID-19 controversial technologies and restrictions Research on political ideologies could further enlighten why people’s ideologies and political values may further perplex their reactions and behaviours to such interventions in their human rights.

It is claimed that while experiencing low pace, new lifestyles and working patterns, people are reflecting and recalibrating their priorities and social values. Is that true in relation to their travel behavior? Would people require and expect greater responsibility and sustainability from tourism operators and destinations? Would they be motivated to travel more but for a meaningful purpose? Or would people go back to their previous travel behaviours and preferences? Past research ( Pieters, 2013 ) has shown that consumers face a “material trap” in which materialism fosters social isolation and which in turn reinforces materialism. This might explain why during lockdowns people increased their online shopping and consumption of virtual entertainment and probably they might not have reflected and reset their values. Is that true and what is its impact on tourists’ behaviours? Consumer psychology and behavioural science explaining how people wish to align the time they spend with their values (congruence theory) can provide useful insights into such investigations. In addition, religion and spirituality studies can further enlighten the impact of COVID-19’s living conditions on tourists’ tourism sustainability preferences and attitudes as well as responses to tourism operators’ and destination sustainability practices and communications. This is because religion and spirituality is found to play an important role in influencing individuals’ thoughts and behaviors ( Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012 ).

Social distancing imposed by COVID-19 includes actions such as, reducing social contact, avoiding crowded places, or minimizing travel. Social distancing can significantly impact how people experience and evaluate leisure and travel activities like hiking, outdoor activities and nature-based tourism or even personal services like spas, dining, concierge services. Social distancing or better physical distancing may influence tourists’ perceptions of health hazards, insecurity and unpleasant tourism experiences. But how ‘far’ away is enough for tourism employees and other customers to be from each other without compromising sociality, personal service and perceptions of social distancing measures? Social distancing has not been studied before in service provision, while law and criminology research on ‘sexual’ consent may provide a different perspective on how people define social space and the ‘invasion’ or not of others into it.

Tourism is heavily a hedonic and sensorial experience. Servicescape design plays a major role in tourism experience by influencing customers’ emotions, behaviors, attitudes and service evaluations. However, COVID-19 operating standards require servicescapes to be redesigned eliminating or inhibiting sensorial elements and ‘changing’ tourism experiences, e.g.: smell of cleanliness instead of fragrance; social distancing and number of co-presence of clients in restaurants, festivals and other tourism settings will influence new standards of psychological comfort and acceptable levels of perceived crowdness; raised voices may generate a wider “moist breath zone” increasing viral spread; warmer temperatures create relaxing environments encouraging customers to stay and spend more, but poorly ventilated or air-conditioned indoor spaces may spread COVID-19. Would tourists and tourism firms change their behaviour and attitudes towards these new COVID-19 servicescapes? What new service etiquettes, customer expectations, behaviours and experiences would COVID-19 determined servicescapes and operational procedures may generate?

These and many other fields of research have been raised due to COVID-19 conditions, and as explained a plurality of theoretical lenses can be beneficial to provide a better understanding of these new concepts introduced in tourism research.

3.2. Tourism supply – Businesses

Tourism businesses have been racing to ensure the safety of their employees, customers, brand image and cash liquidity. To re-start, tourism companies are re-designing experiences (e.g. winery experiences, museum visits, tours, sports events, in-room dining and entertainment instead of hotel facilities) to feature smaller groups of tourists, outdoor activities and/or private experiences complying with social distancing and gathering restrictions and travellers’ expectations. Tourism companies have already upgraded their cleaning procedures by adopting new standards and restraining staff. Many of companies promote their hygiene certifications accredited by health expert associations. Tourism professionals are being trained to become ‘contact tracers’ obtaining relevant certifications confirming their skills to identify cases, build rapport and community with cases, identify their contact and stop community transmission. Restaurants, hotels, airports, public spaces are re-engineering their operations to make them contact-free or contactless. Mobile apps (for check-in, check-out, room keys, mobile payments, bookings-purchases), self-service kiosks, in-room technologies for entertainment and destination e-shopping (e.g. virtual reality for destination virtual visits to museums, attractions and destinations, movies), robots (for reception and concierge services, food delivery museum guides), artificial intelligence enabled websites and chatbox for customer communication and services, digital payments (e.g. digital wallets, paypal, credit cards). In addition, the new operating environment enforced by COVID-19 measures require firms to adopt new technologies and applications to ensure management of crowds and number of people gathered in public spaces (e.g. airports, shopping malls, museums, restaurants, hotels), human disinfectors and hand sanitiser equipment, applications identifying and managing people’s health identity and profiles.

Research can conduct a reality check and benchmarking of the effectiveness of the various respond and recovery strategies adopted by tourism operators. Research can also investigate the role and the way to build resilience to fast develop and implement such strategies. However, such research is useful and important but probably not enough for investigating the resetting of the next tourism industry normal. Transformative COVID-19 research should help industry to reimagine and implement an operating environment that is human-centred and responsible to sustainability and well-being values.

3.3. Destination management organisations and policy makers

Governments and destinations have been providing stimulus packages and interventions (e.g. tax reliefs, subsidies, deferrals of payments) to ensure the viability and continuity of tourism firms and jobs. Governments have intervened in mobility restriction and closures of businesses. Because of these, COVID-19 has resulted in a greater intervention of governments in the functioning and operations of the tourism industry. The government has also become a much bigger actor in the tourism economy (e.g. re-nationalisation of airlines and other tourism firms and tourism infrastructure like airports). This is very unique for COVID-19, as previous crises have generated research and institutional interest, but they did not have policy impact, specifically in tourism ( Hall et al., 2020 ). Would such government interventions and role sustain in the future? How will this influence the structure and functioning of the industry at a national and global level? Debates have already started questioning the effectiveness of such interventions, their fairness and equal distribution amongst tourism stakeholders ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ), their long-term impacts in terms of austerity and cuts of public expenditures. Future research looing into these issues is highly warrantied. In their CIVID-19 reactions and responses governments and destinations seem to have acted individually and nationalistic and recently selectively (e.g. bilateral and multilateral agreements amongst tourism bubbles). However, systems theory and crisis management, would argue that crises need to be addressed collectively. What would be the impact of such governmental behaviours on the future of tourism and destinations tourism policy making and strategies? As it seems, COVID-19 has raised political, geopolitical and governance issues that frameworks and concepts from these disciplines would need to be used to enlighten such research.

4. Conclusions: What is more and what is next

COVID-19 resulted in numerous socio-cultural, economic and psychological impacts on various tourism stakeholders, some of them for years to stay. Consequently, the pandemic has created a ‘fertile’ new context whereby tourism researchers can conduct research with valuable end-user benefits. However, COVID-19 tourism research should try to avoid the ‘publish or perish’ old mantra that has been driving and mushrooming tourism research ( Hall, 2011 ). Although studies conducting a reality check of impacts, predicting tourism demand, and benchmarking good and best practices are very useful and contextually interesting to assess COVID-19 impacts on various geographies sectors and stakeholders, they potentially offer limited scope to advance our knowledge on crisis management as well as to potentiate the pandemic’s affordance to reset our research agendas and expand the contribution and frontiers of tourism research and industry. It is the aim of this paper to inspire tourism scholars to view and use the COVID-19 as a transformational opportunity for reforming their mindsets in designing and conducting research and for the tourism institutions to reset their standards and metrics for motivating and evaluating the purpose, role and impact of tourism research. In addition, crises also accelerate technology innovation and change ( Colombo, Piva, Quas, & Rossi-Lamastra, 2016 ). However, these should not be viewed as inevitable, unquestionable and impossible to re-shape and re-adjust to serve real needs and meaningful values. It is the responsibility scholars to ensure that COVID-19 tourism research can ensure the latter.

The present analysis is not exhaustive in terms of the COVID-19 impacts, while impacts may not be uniform across all the actors of the same tourism stakeholder group. For example, the COVID-19 has different impacts on tourism operators based on their characteristics such as, the nature of the tourism sector (intermediaries, event organizers transportation, type of accommodation or attraction provider), their size, location, management and ownership style. Similarly, the highly heterogenous tourism demand (e.g. leisure and business travelers, group and independent tourists, special interest tourists such as religious, gay & lesbian, corporate travelers) also means that different COVID-19 impacts and implications are anticipated and worthy to be investigated for different market segments. COVID-19 tourism research should not only disclose such differentiated COVID-19 impacts, but it should also provide an enriched explanatory power about the roots of such disparities with the scope to envision and/or test any suggestions on how to address any inequalities and disadvantages that they may cause to various groups of tourism stakeholders. The analysis did not also include other major tourism stakeholders such as tourism employees, local communities, tourism entrepreneurs and tourism education (scholars, students and institutions alike). Recent developments and pressures faced by some of these tourism stakeholders were further strengthen by the COVID-19, which in turn place them in a more disadvantaged situation. COVID-19 research related to these stakeholders is equally important.

For example, COVID-19 has worsen the already difficult situation (e.g. high labour flexibility but at the expense of low salaries, lack of job security, insurance and other benefits) faced by an increasing number of tourism micro-entrepreneurs (e.g. food delivery people, ‘Uber taxi drivers’, “Airbnb hoteliers”) ( Sigala & Dolnicar, 2017 ). Algorithmic management, increased pressure and work stress are some of the negative impacts of the gig economy, which become more evident and fortified due to the COVID-19 (e.g. food delivery employees have no health insurance or coverage of lost salaries in case they get infected while working; ‘micro-hoteliers’ risk loosing their homes, as they cannot collect ‘accommodation fees’ to pay off home mortgages). Being an unofficial and sometime black economy/employment, gig tourism workers may not even be entitled to governmental subsidies provided to COVID-19 vulnerable employees or businesses. As the COVID-19 is expected to continue and reinforce contemporary paradigms and trends of this ‘causalisation’ of tourism employment (due to the upcoming economic recession and greater operating costs of tourism firms), COVID-19 tourism research needs to urgently investigate issues of employee psychological, mental and physical health, engagement, working conditions (e.g. remote working, virtual teams and virtual leadership) and other human resource issues within the COVID-19 setting. For example, traditional leadership, recruitment, management, and motivational incentives may not inspire, engage, motivate, and attract employees who have recalibrated their personal values and priorities during the COVID-19 lockdown and remote working.

The COVID-19 impacts on tourism employment create further pressures on tourism education that has severely affected by the pandemic. Apart from the virtualization of teaching and learning processes, tourism students and graduates have to also address the halt of industry interships, recruitment and questionable career paths. Tourism programs and universities are faced with reduced students’ intakes, industry and government sponsorship and research funding. Tourism researchers need to find new ways and sources for conducting research addressing social distancing, respecting the mental health and privacy issues of COVID-19 affected stakeholders. Investigating pedagogical issues such as how to make the design and delivery of tourism curricula more ‘resilient’, agile and updated to develop graduates with flexible and transferable skills to other industries is also equally important. For example, new online and offline courses and certifications have already emerged training graduates to become professional ‘contact tracer’ possessing the technical, emotional/social and ethical skills to manage customers and employees in situations of contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine (e.g. how contact tracing is done, how to build rapport with cases, identify their contacts, and support both cases and their contacts to stop transmission in their communities ( https://uh.edu/medicine/education/contact-tracer/ , https://www.coursera.org/learn/covid-19-contact-tracing?edocomorp=covid-19-contact-tracing , https://sph.uth.edu/news/story/trace ). However, is that just an opportunistic educational offering and/or a new ‘skill and qualification standard’ that tourism industry and demand would expect alike?

Many other specialized topics also warrant research within the domain of COVID-19. For example, the social entrepreneurship has been booming in tourism during the last decade ( Sigala, 2019 ) for several reasons including the 2008 economic recession. COVID-19 has boosted such tourism social ventures aiming to create social value, solve social problems created by the COVID-19 and provide help to people in need (e.g. marketplaces enabling the repurposing of various tourism unutilized resources such as labour, hotel and function space, food, cleaning material, e.g. HospitalityHelps.org ). The mushrooming of COVID-19 related tourism social ventures provides many opportunities to study and better understand this phenomenon within new and various ecosystems, stakeholders and circumstances.

Marianna Sigala is Professor at the University of South Australia and Director of the Centre for Tourism & Leisure Management. She is an international authority in the field of technological advances and applications in tourism with numerous awarded publications, research projects, keynote presentations in international conferences. In 2016, she has been awarded the prestigious EuroCHRIE Presidents’ Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements to tourism and hospitality education. She is the co-editor of the Journal of Service Theory & Practice, and the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management. Professor Sigala was also appointed as CAUTHE Fellow in 2020.

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Landscape and tourism: evolution of research topics.

tourism research topics 2020

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 3. results and discussion, 3.1. evolution of scientific production: performance analysis, 3.2. conceptual analysis: vosviewer and scimat, 4. conclusions and limitations, author contributions, conflicts of interest.

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Click here to enlarge figure

YearApYAupYCpY∑CpY/∑ApYJpYCopY
199224147.017
1993469317.836
1994357119.833
199571453544.657
199661312938.3610
19975840146.056
19984712744.246
1999122258345.41114
2000112456546.6913
2001132359446.41217
200291823644.1910
20032455102843.82321
2004183335640.11618
20053768100537.03022
200651108120433.74229
200776190197931.66535
2008112288260829.37738
2009106236177926.68244
2010161395284024.411745
2011158410218422.410749
2012180400231620.713753
2013189468217419.213857
2014221533191817.616554
2015259693209116.118257
2016267708167114.719263
2017338935158013.221269
20183801137162812.023573
2019406117463210.624677
2020 (Until Spt.1)2819241179.716771
Total3340889932,458 2301
EstimatesModel 1Model 2
Coefficientt-StatisticCoefficientt-Statistic
Constant19.018423.70889412.143293.295575
Aids received2.4880032.880295
Funding organizations7.4300965.358815
R20.5936560.766223
R2 adjusted0.5901530.764208
D–W1.6520982.221049
F Test169.4724380.1996
No. observations5858
Number of CitationsNumber of Articles% Articles
>30030.09%
300–20030.09%
150–19980.24%
149–100250.75%
99–75341.02%
74–50682.04%
49–252016.02%
24–1045013.47%
9–548714.58%
4–1104131.17%
No citations102030.54%
Total articles3340100.00%
AuthorsTitleSourceYearCitations in WoSCitations per Year
MacKay, K.J.Pictorial element of destination in image formationATR199734314.29
Raymond, C.M.; Bryan, B.A.M., Darla, H.; Cast, A.; Strathearn, S.; Grandgirard, A.; Kalivas, T.Mapping community values for natural capital and ecosystem servicesEE200933527.92
Stone, P.R.A dark tourism spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitionsT200630520.33
JournalNº of ItemsNº of CitationsAverage Citations
Sustainability1225004.1
Land Use Policy65123519
Tourism Geographies5166713.1
AuthorNº of Articles
Zhang, J.13
Verburg, P.H.11
Hall, C.M.10
Jeong, J.S.10
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Share and Cite

Jiménez-García, M.; Ruiz-Chico, J.; Peña-Sánchez, A.R. Landscape and Tourism: Evolution of Research Topics. Land 2020 , 9 , 488. https://doi.org/10.3390/land9120488

Jiménez-García M, Ruiz-Chico J, Peña-Sánchez AR. Landscape and Tourism: Evolution of Research Topics. Land . 2020; 9(12):488. https://doi.org/10.3390/land9120488

Jiménez-García, Mercedes, José Ruiz-Chico, and Antonio Rafael Peña-Sánchez. 2020. "Landscape and Tourism: Evolution of Research Topics" Land 9, no. 12: 488. https://doi.org/10.3390/land9120488

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Tourism and Hospitality Dissertation Topics

Published by Grace Graffin at January 10th, 2023 , Revised On May 17, 2024

Introduction

As a tourism student, you will be required to study the basics of tourism, hospitality, and event management. Some important issues surrounding tourism include but are not limited to medicine, finance, culture, geography, and more.

We understand that choosing the right dissertation topic can be a bit overwhelming for you. Therefore,  our writers have provided a comprehensive list of topics for the tourism dissertation. These topics are recent, relevant, and exploratory enough for you to conduct a comprehensive research study.

We can even customise topics according to your needs. So, go through our list of dissertation topics, choose the one that interests you, and let us know if you would like any help from our writers.

Check our  dissertation example to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

You can review step by step guide on how to write your dissertation  here.

Latest Tourism Research Topics 

Investigating how the tourism industry has taken green and sustainable measures- a case study of uk.

Research Aim: This study will investigate the various aspects of the UK tourism industry geared towards making green and sustainable measures for environmental benefits. It will also look into the consumer’s perspective towards green tourism and its positive and negative impacts on the tourism industry and the tourists. It also helps you better understand the concept of a green environment and its influence on the tourism industry.

Environmental Management Systems and their Implementation in the UK- A Systematic Review.

Research Aim: This study will explore the quality of environmental management systems, environmental performance, improvements, and implementation in the UK. We will focus on different companies with high environmental impacts and how they have improved the environment and the use of environmental management systems (EMS). This study will also look into how it has changed or influenced the hospitality industry.

Investigating the impact of Social Media Recommendations on Hotel Booking in the UK.

Research Aim: Social media is a part of every aspect of our daily life. This research will investigate the influence of social media on tourism and specifically on choosing a hotel; it will also help you evaluate if consumers perceive social media-based recommendations differently than more traditional sources of internet-based marketing. Qualitative research will be used in this, followed by thematic analysis to find the role of social media in recommendations and influencing consumers’ searches. This will help us better understand how VR makes decisions and hotel bookings.

Assessing the Impact of Virtual Reality on Tourism.

Research Aim: Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology in tourism. This study will find the impact of virtual reality on the tourism industry. It will also investigate consumer behaviour towards it. We will better understand how VR has affected the tourism industry and significantly influenced the results. TAM research model will be developed to describe the nature of the 3D virtual world. It will also cover some psychological aspects to understand the consumer perspective.

Role of Social Media Marketing in deciding a Travel Destination- A Systematic Review.

Research Aim: This study investigates the role of social media marketing in deciding a travel destination. This study aims to find and understand how social media can achieve marketing objectives. Taking a quantitative approach, we will find the role of social media marketing and its effect on making travel choices through interviews and surveys. It will further explore the tourist’s perception, expectations, and experiences.

Investigating the Negative Impact of Travel Bans

Research Aim: This study explores the negative effects of travel bans on social, economic, cultural, and public health aspects. The study aims to analyse the repercussions of travel restrictions to inform policymaking. It will further investigate ways to avoid adverse consequences while promoting global mobility and cooperation. 

An Exploration of the Hospitality Industry Wages

Research Aim: To investigate the wage structures in the hospitality industry. This study explores factors influencing disparities and evaluates their implications. Insights will be provided on wage fairness, workplace satisfaction, gender discrimination, and industry competitiveness. It will also cover policies and practices to improve employee well-being and organisational performance.

Effects of Covid-19 on Tourism and Hospitality Dissertation Topics 

Topic 1: tourism after coronavirus pandemic - way forward for tourism and hospitality industry in the uk or any other country of your choice.

Research Aim: Tourism is a reason for most of the human mobility in the modern world. According to the World Tourism Organisation (2020), international tourism has indicated continuous growth for the tenth consecutive year, reporting 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals in 2019 and an estimated 1.8 billion international tourist arrivals by 2030 )people are forecasted to be. This particular research will focus on the effects of the Covid-19 outbreak on the tourism and hospitality industry in the United Kingdom or any other country of your choice.

Topic 2: Investigating the Long Term Effects of Prolonged and New Travel Restrictions on the UK Tourism Industry

Research Aim: Britain will require anyone entering the country to self-quarantine for two weeks, and other European countries are pondering similar measures, but the prospects of prolonged and even new travel restrictions are destroying what hopes the continent’s airlines and tourist industry have been harbouring of at least a partial coronavirus rebound. Can the tourism sector of the UK overcome these challenges?

Topic 3: Coronavirus: Dubai Tourism Insists Emirate's Hotel Sector is Healthy, Rejects Bloomberg Report but Is It Really the Case?

Research Aim: Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) has denied a Bloomberg report about the emirate’s hospitality businesses adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. This research will employ primary research methodology to gather data from the key stakeholders of the Emirates hotel industry to assess whether or not the ongoing COVID-19 crisis is causing panic and financial damage to the hotel industry.

Topic 4: Will Easing the Travel Restrictions Benefit the UK Tourism Sector in the Short Term?

Research Aim: Many European countries, including the UK, are easing lockdown measures, including tourist destinations preparing for the summer. Cafes and restaurants in London and other cities hardest hit by the virus in the UK have opened two weeks behind the rest of the country. However, with most travellers preferring to stay home in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, how effective are these measures going to be?

Topic 5: Coronavirus outbreak: Caribbean Tourism Struggles as Visitors Stay Home

Research Aim: In the Caribbean, the government plans to require all visitors to undergo rapid Covid-19 testing upon entry. They hope provisions such as virus tests for all industry workers and socially distanced resort dining will make people feel comfortable travelling. This research study will explore whether the measures taken by the Caribbean government will actually encourage the visitors to leave the comfort of their home and travel in the midst of the Covid-19 Crisis.

Ecotourism and Community Participation Dissertation Topics 

Topic 1: online tourism agents and websites.

Research Aim: This research aims to study online tourism websites and travelling agents

Topic 2: Advances in Tourism and Hospitality Post-pandemic

Research Aim: This research aims to assess the advances in Tourism and Hospitality post-pandemic

Topic 3: Impacts of Social Distancing on Tourism Managements

Research Aim: This research aims to study the impacts of social distancing on tourism managements

Topic 4: Advances in Hotel Management Post-pandemic

Research Aim: This research aims to assess advances in Hotel management post-pandemic

Topic 5: The Linguistic Roots of the Word “Hospitality” across Different Languages

Research Aim: This research investigates the linguistic roots of the word hospitality across different languages and the semantic shifts over time.

Topic 6: The Relationship Between the Host and the Guest

Research Aim: This research explores the relationship between the host and the guest and how both need to act under laws and regulations.

Economic Conditions and Local Tourism Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: factors impacting destination selection for medical tourism.

Research Aim: Medical tourism is a growing trend. An increasing number of people travel to another country, seeking medical treatment which is expensive or unavailable on their own. Various factors impact the destination selection process for medical treatment purposes. The destination can be local or international. With limited evidence on the factors that impact destination selection for medical tourism, there is a need for a comprehensive study exploring these factors in detail.

Topic 2: Impact of Low budget Airline Services on Boosting International Tourism in Europe: A Case Study of Ryanair.

Research Aim: With increasing costs of air travelling, the demand for low-budget airline services is on the rise. Ryanair is one of the leading low-budget airline services based in the UK. Its cheap air tickets attract many regular travellers. Given this, the main aim of this research will be to explore whether or not low-budget airlines are actually helping to increase international tourism in Europe or not. This research will be conducted based on quantitative data which will be collected from a sample of Ryanair international tourism travellers.

Topic 3: Eco-friendly Practices and Their Effect on Hotel Selection Decision: A Case Study of UK Hospitality Industry.

Research Aim: Various technologies can be implemented to achieve eco-friendliness, such as; internet of things, automation technology, bamboo industrialisation, and sustainable building construction. On the other hand, eco-friendly practices include; water and energy conservation, renewable energy use, waste recycling and management, alternative plastic products, and more. Many hotels in the UK install solar panels and automated systems, which generate renewable energy and ensure complete automation for lights and water. It is worth evaluating how eco-friendly technologies and practices affect the hotel selection decision of guests in the UK hospitality industry.

Topic 4: How Economic Conditions of a Country Impact its Local Tourism: Identifying the Economic Factors Influencing the Tourism Sector.

Research Aim: Economic factors have a great impact on tourism. When a country is economically strong, it spends a great deal on tourism development. On the other hand, tourism could be adversely affected if a country is struggling with its finances. This research aims to investigate and critically analyse the economic factors which tend to affect the tourism sector of a country. The study will also weigh the economic upsides and downsides of these factors concerning local tourism.

Topic 5: Assessing the Impact of Social Media Platforms on Tourism Destination Selection.

Research Aim: These days, social media websites play a tremendous role for tourists in destination selection. The experiences and reviews that people share on online social platforms have a huge impact on making or breaking the future of any tourist destination. This research will analyze the role of different social media platforms in choosing tourism destinations among tourists. This research will also shed light on the rationale and factors people rely on social media to select their tourism destination.

Topic 6: Assessing the Impact of Government Rules, Regulations, and Policies on Tourism Development: A Case Study of Developing Countries.

Research Aim: The tourism sector of any country is greatly looked after by governmental and regulatory bodies. This research will analyze the role played by such bodies from the perspective of policymaking and regulation implementation. The study will also explore how the impact of policymaking and government regulations in developed countries might be different from that of developing countries.

Topic 7: Analysing the Impact of Natural Hazaresearch will measure the customer satisfaction of British lesbians after they have undergone gender reassignment at the Yanhee International Hospital in Bangkok.

Research Aim: Natural hazards can have a disastrous effect on the tourism industry of any country. The UK is one of the countries where the tourism industry has experienced huge success. Thus, this research will be carried out to analyze the impact of such hazards on the UK’s tourism sector.

Topic 8: Assessing the Factors and Preferences Impacting Tourist's Decisions to Travel to a Dark Tourism Site.

Research Aim: As a result of a shift in preferences of tourists and an urge to explore and learn, dark tourism has gained immense popularity and success in recent times. This research will explore the factors and reasons why tourists choose dark places as their tourism destination.

Topic 9: The Impact of Travel Bloggers and vloggers on the Tourism Industry.

Research Aim: Travel bloggers and vloggers are an important part of the tourism industry now. These people travel the world, document their experiences through their writing or videos, and influence people. Tourists throughout the world now depend on their reviews and choose their travel destinations accordingly. This research will aim to explore how these influencers have completely changed the tourism industry.

Educational Tourism Dissertation Topics

Tourism has gained tremendous popularity among academicians and researchers in recent times. Educational tourism primarily takes into consideration technical competencies and new knowledge gained outside the classroom environment.

Educational tourism brings to light the idea of travelling to learn about the cultures of other nations. Exchange student programmes are perhaps the most commonly employed educational tourism strategy, allowing students to learn about the culture of the host nation through research work and travel. Possible areas of research in this field of tourism for your dissertation are provided below;

Topic 1: Educational Tourism Programmes and the Popularity of Host Nations

Research Aim: This research will discuss the educational exchange programmes in detail and will also assess how educational tourism can add to the appeal of the host nations for prospective tourists.

Topic 2: Factors Affecting the Decision of British Students to Join International Student Exchange Programmes.

Research Aim: Even though student exchange programmes are popular throughout the world, there are certain countries where they are practised the most. This research will study one such country, the UK, concerning the factors that encourage British students to join international exchange programmes.

Topic 3: Factors Contributing Towards the Success of Work & Study Programmes in the UK

Research Aim: This research will analyse the factors that contribute towards the success of study programmes in the UK, i.e. benefits of studying in the UK and the attractiveness of the UK as a place to live and study.

Topic 4: To Analyse the Satisfaction of International Students Enrolled in Student Exchange Programmes in the UK

Research Aim: This research will cover an important topic, i.e., measure the satisfaction of international students enrolled in exchange programs in the UK – the same topic can be used for any other country such as the USA or Canada.

Topic 5: To Investigate Potential Marketing and Communication Tools to Promote “any country” as the Best Place to Pursue Higher Education.

Research Aim: This research will investigate and conclude the most successful marketing and communication tools that are used to promote exchange programmes in a particular country. The topic can be customised according to the country of your choice.

Topic 6: What are the factors Influencing British Students’ Decision to Join Academic Year Exchange Programme in Japan?

Research Aim: Japan is one of the most popular destinations when it comes to student exchange programmes. This research will assess the factors that influence a British student’s decision to go to Japan to pursue education.

Topic 7: To Examine the Popularity of Student Exchange Programmes Offered by Chinese-speaking Countries.

Research Aim: This research will explore the reasons for the popularity of student exchange programmes in countries where Chinese is the official language such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, etc.

Topic 8: To Investigate the Attitude and Perception of British Students toward Summer Camps.

Research Aim: Summer camps are extremely popular in the west. This research will explore the perceptions of British students towards summer camps and what motivates them to attend them.

Topic 9: Factors Affecting the Decision of University Students to Pursue a Placement Programme in the US?

Research Aim: This research will aim to understand the rationale of university students’ decisions to pursue placement programmes in the US,

Topic 10: To Examine the Satisfaction of University Students Returning from Cultural Exchange Programmes in the US.

Research Aim: This research will aim to understand the satisfaction of university students who are on their way back from exchange programmes in the US.

Medical Tourism Dissertation Topics

Medical tourism is a new area of study in the tourism industry. The gap in the prices of medical facilities available in developing and developed countries is significant, propelling many patients to travel to far destinations to benefit from economic, medical services.

Similarly, many financially well-off patients decide to have medical treatment in foreign countries with advanced and established medical systems that provide state-of-the-art medical facilities unavailable in their home countries.

Although there may be insufficient secondary data to analyse this tourism sub-topic, researching this area will prove to be interesting. You can choose your medical tourism dissertation topics from this list.

Topic 1: Investigating the Reasons Why British Citizens Travel to Different Countries for their Dental Procedures

Research Aim: This research will identify and discuss in detail the reasons why British citizens travel to different countries for dental treatment.

Topic 2: The efficacy of marketing and communication tools employed by Thai plastic surgery and extreme makeover service providers – An investigation into the attitude and perception of British travellers.

Research Aim: A large number of British citizens travel to Thailand for cosmetic and plastic surgeries. This research will aim to understand the attitudes and perceptions of British travellers who opt for these surgeries in a foreign country. The research will also assess the marketing and communication tools employed by Thai medical service providers.

Topic 3: To Identify and Discuss Critical Marketing Strategies to Promote a Weight Loss Centre in the UK.

Research Aim: This research will talk about the marketing strategies that are undertaken in the UK to promote weight loss centres.

Topic 4: Measuring Customer satisfaction of British Lesbians After Having Sex Reassignment at Yanhee International Hospital, Bangkok

Research Aim: This research will measure the customer satisfaction of British lesbians after they have undergone gender reassignment at the Yanhee International Hospital in Bangkok.

Topic 5: To Examine the Factors Influencing the Decisions of British Women to Buy Body Contour Tour Packages in East Asia.

Research Aim: This study will analyze the factors that influence the decision-making of British women when burying body contour tour packages in East Asia.

Topic 6: To Investigate the Extent to Which Swiss Weight Control Tour Packages Have Influenced Women in the UK.

Research Aim: This research will focus on the decision-making detriments of British Women who opt to purchase weight control tour packages in Switzerland.

Topic 7: How Young British Females Perceive Facial Lifting package Tours in East Asia?

Research Aim: This study will analyze how young British females perceive facial lifting package tours in East Asia.

Topic 8: To Understand and Discuss the Factors Affecting Buying Decisions to Benefit from Extreme Makeover Tour Packages in Eastern Europe.

Research Aim: This research will critically explore the factors that influence the buying decision of customers who purchase extreme makeover packages from Eastern Europe.

Topic 9: How Attractive are the Plastic Surgery Makeover Services to Female British Customers – A Qualitative Study

Research Aim: This research will understand and analyze the attractiveness of plastic surgery makeover services that influence British females to purchase them. The research will be descriptive in nature.

Topic 10: How Homosexual Men Choose Medical Tour Packages for Sex Reassignment.

Research Aim: This study will investigate gender reassignment tour packages that interest homosexual men and the factors influencing their decision-making process.

Tourism Management Dissertation Topics

Tourism management is perhaps the most interesting area of the tourism industry. It mainly involves travelling for the purpose of leisure and recreation. People travelling to other countries and outside their usual environment with the intent of leisure can be classified as tourists.

It should be noted that the phenomenon of tourism has grown tremendously in recent years, thanks to the impact of globalisation. There are many countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Maldives, and Fiji, whose largest source of income is tourism. In these countries, tourism generates huge revenue for the government and also provides employment opportunities for the working class as well as businesses.

The suggestions below can help you to narrow your research for your tourism dissertation.

Topic 1: How British Tourists Perceive Chinese World Heritage Tour – A Qualitative Study

Research Aim: This research will focus on how British tourists perceive Chinese heritage and what compels them to visit China.

Topic 2: Exploring the Factors that Make London the Most Popular Destination for Christmas Shopping

Research Aim: This research will analyse and explore the various factors that promote London as one of the most attractive destinations for Christmas shopping.

Topic 3: Investigating the Underlying Factors that British Citizens Consider when Choosing a Destination for Their Winter Holidays.

Research Aim: This research will analyse the various factors that British citizens consider and evaluate when choosing a destination for their winter vacations.

Topic 4: An Analysis of Factors Affecting Employees’ Motivation in Luxury Hotels of Dubai.

Research Aim: This research will study the factors influencing employee motivation in luxury and five-star hotels in Dubai. The study will make use of secondary data and primary research to establish the exact factors that motivate employees to work for luxury hotels in Dubai.

Topic 5: How the Tourism Industry of Thailand Responded to the Tsunami.

Research Aim: This study will dive into the past to establish how the Thai tourism industry responded to Tsunami.

Visit our topics database to view 100s of dissertation topics in your research area.

Topic 6: Factors Influencing British Customers’ Decisions of Purchasing Egypt Tour Packages.

Research Aim: This research will explore the factors that British citizens consider when planning their holiday to Egypt.

Topic 7: Attitude and Perception of British Tourists Toward Thailand as a Winter Holiday Destination

Research Aim: This study will research why the British choose Thailand as their winter holiday destination.

Topic 8: The Increasing Popularity of Cruise Travel in South Africa Among British Tourists

Research Aim: This research will consider the reasons why South African cruise is extremely popular amongst British tourists.

Topic 9: To Investigate the Efficacy of Integrated Marketing Communication Tools to Restore the Image of Amsterdam as the Best Tourist Destination in Europe

Research Aim: This research will explore the marketing and communication tools utilized to market Amsterdam as the best tourism destination in Europe.

Topic 10: Factors Influencing British Customers’ Decision to Choose a Particular Destination During the Summer/winter Holiday

Research Aim: This research will discuss all the factors that influence British citizens to choose a destination for their summer or winter holidays. This topic can be customized according to a country of your choosing.

Hospitality Dissertation Topics

Hospitality industry  consists of casinos, resorts, restaurants, hotels, catering as well as other businesses that serve the tourists. At its core hospitality can be defined as the relationship between a guest and the hotel.

Other aspects of hospitality include but are not limited to liberality, friendliness, warm welcome, entertainment, goodwill, and reception. Modern-day businesses pride themselves on their acts of hospitality. Thus, it is an extremely interesting sub-topic to base your dissertation on. Some topics in this area of tourism are suggested below.

Topic 1: Examining How Popular Travel Agents Such as eBrooker and Opodo are Perceived by British Tourists

Research Aim: This research will evaluate some of the best and most popular travel agents such as Opodo and eBookers and how they assist British tourists with their destination planning.

Topic 2: Identifying the Factors that Influence Leisure Hotel Buying Decisions of British Customers

Research Aim: This research will identify the factors that influence British customers’ decision to opt for luxury hotels.

Topic 3: Identifying Features of a leisure hotel that attract British honeymoon couples

Research Aim: This research will identify features of a luxury hotel that attract British couples looking for a honeymoon location.

Topic 4: Investigating Hospitality Practices of Popular Leisure Hotels in Dubai

Research Aim: This study will investigate hospitality purchases of attractive luxury hotels in Dubai.

Topic 5: What are the Prime Factors Influencing Restaurant Selection Decisions of Young British Couples?

Research Aim: This research will explore the factors that influence British couples to select restaurants for their time out.

Topic 6: Investigating and Reviewing Strategies Employed by Hotel Restaurants and Pubs in London to Keep Their Employees Motivated

Research Aim: This research will study an important aspect of the tourism industry, i.e., how hotel restaurants and pubs in London keep their employees motivated.

Topic 7: Exploring the Relationship Between Culture and Leisure Hotel Buying Decisions in London.

Research Aim: This research will investigate the relationship between how customers in London choose a luxury hotel based on their culture.

Topic 8: Creating Brand Sales and Recognition Using Integrated Marketing Communication Tools.

Research Aim: This research will explore how brand sales and recognition are built using various marketing and communication tools.

Topic 9: Understanding the Relationship Between Customers’ Buying Decisions and Leisure Hotel Hospitality Features within the Context of Overseas Holidays

Research Aim: This research will explore the relationship between customers’ decision to choose a luxury hotel while visiting different countries.

Topic 10: The Impact of Hospitality Companies’ Brand Image on Tourists’ Buying Decisions.

Research Aim: This research will first talk about different hospitality companies and how their brand image impacts tourists’ buying decisions.

Black Tourism Dissertation Topics

Black tourism, also known as dark tourism and grief tourism, involves travelling to historical sites/places associated with death, casualties, and suffering.

Dark or black tourist sites such as battlefields, monuments, castles, Tsunami sites, and Ground Zero are man-made or natural. They are found commonly in Scotland, South Asia, China, and Eastern Europe.

Dark tourism may not be the ideal choice for many students. However, it is an exciting topic to explore. Possible research topics under this field of tourism are listed below:

Topic 1: How Local Communities Can Benefit Commercially and Socially from Tours to Death/Casualty Sites – A Qualitative Study

Research Aim: This research will explore the various benefits that local communities can experience from touring death or casualty sites.

Topic 2: Attitude and Perception of Tourists Towards Taj Mahal in India

Research Aim: Taj Mahal can be categorised as a dark tourism site because many people consider it a mausoleum. This research will discuss the attitude and perceptions of tourists when visiting the Taj Mahal.

Topic 3: To Investigate and Identify the Factors Influencing Tourists’ Decisions to Visit gGrief Sites in the UK

Research Aim: This research will explore the factors that influence the decisions of tourists to visit grief sites in the UK.

Topic 4: Is Mercat Tour in Scotland a Grief Tourism Site for Potential Tourists?

Research Aim: Mercat Tour in Scotland is considered a ghost site. This study will explore what makes this site a dark tourism destination.

Topic 5: Developing a Highly Effective Marketing Strategy to Promote London Dungeon Among the Tourists

Research Aim: This research will understand the various marketing strategies undertaken to promote the London Dungeon amongst tourists.

Topic 6: What are the Primary Factors Influencing British Tourists’ Decision to Choose Grief Sites?

Research Aim: This research will understand the various factors that influence British tourists’ decision to select a dark tourism site.

Topic 7: Developing a Marketing Strategy to Promote Beaumaris Prison in Wales as Another Black Tourism Site in Britain

Research Aim: This research will focus on developing a successful marketing strategy that will help promote Beaumaris Prison in Wales as a black tourism site in Britain.

Topic 8: How are Man-made Grief tourism Sites are Perceived by British Tourists?

Research Aim: This research will discover how British tourists perceive man-made dark tourism destinations.

Comparing the Man-made Black Tourism Sites with the Natural Disaster Grief Sites from the Perspective of Tourists

Research Aim: This research will compare manmade and natural dark tourism destinations with a focus on tourists’ perceptions.

Topic 10: Do the Local Communities Economically Benefit from Tourists Visiting Dark Tourism Sites?

Research Aim: This research will explore whether or not local communities are impacted in any way when dark tourist sites in their locality are visited.

Sustainability and Tourism Dissertation Topics

At its core, this field of tourism primarily focuses on the way tourists can live harmoniously with the planet earth. Ecotourist sites or sustainable tourist sites are those that promote fauna and flora and cultural heritage. Another objective of  eco-tourism  is to provide social and economic opportunities to local communities. Some interesting topics worth exploring, in this area, are suggested below:

Topic 1: Investigating the Impact of the Internet on the Growth of Eco-tourism in the UK

Research Aim: This research will study the impact of the internet on the rising eco-tourism trend in the UK.

Topic 2: Factors Affecting British Customers’ Decision of Choosing an Eco-tourism

Research Aim: This research will study the reason why British tourists opt for an eco-tourism site as compared to traditional destinations.

Topic 3: Establishing and Discussing Strategies to Promote Swansea as the Best Eco-tourist Spot in the UK

Research Aim: This research will discuss the various ways through which Swansea can be promoted as the best eco-tourist spot in the UK.

Topic 4: Analysing the Role of Price in the Selection of Eco-tourism Destinations

Research Aim: This research will understand the various factors that influence the tourists’ decision to choose an eco-friendly site for their next holiday destination.

Topic 5: Examining the Use of Integrated Marketing Communication Tools to Promote Eco-tourism in Great Britain

Research Aim: This research will study and analyze the different ways through which integrated marketing communication tools should be used to promote eco-tourism in the UK.

Topic 6: Comparing Developing World Eco-tourism Sites Against Western Eco-tourism Sites

Research Aim: This study will compare developing eco-tourism sites and developed or Western eco-tourism sites. The study will conclude which sites tourists prefer and what factors lead them to their decision.

Topic 7: Does Eco-tourism Develop Social and Economic Opportunities for Local Communities?

Research Aim: This research will explore whether or not eco-tourism helps develop social and economic opportunities in the local communities. If it does, the study will explore those factors as well.

Topic 8: Exploring the Factors Affecting the Buying Decisions of Customers Interested in Eco-tourism Sites

Research Aim: This research will identify and discuss the various factors that affect the buying decision of customers who are interested in eco-tourism sites. These factors will then be explored in detail in this study.

Topic 9: Analysis of the Potential of Edinburgh as an Eco-tourism Site in the UK

Research Aim: This research will compare manmade and natural dark tourism destinations and will also include tourists’ perceptions.

Topic 10: Assessing the Impact of Grass Root level Education in Promoting Sustainable Tourism in Europe – A Review of the Literature

Research Aim: This research will discuss the impact of grass root level education to promote sustainable tourism in Europe. The study will be based on the qualitative research method.

Important Notes:

As a tourism and hospitality student looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment with existing tourism and hospitality theories – i.e., to add value and interest to your research topic.

The field of tourism and hospitality is vast and interrelated with many other academic disciplines like civil engineering, construction, law, engineering management, healthcare, mental health, artificial intelligence, physiotherapy, sociology, management, marketing, and nursing . That is why it is imperative to create a project management dissertation topic that is particular and sound and actually solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic; it is the basis of your entire research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your topic wrong: your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, and there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in  writing your dissertation as you may end up in a cycle of rejection at the very initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

While developing a research topic, keeping our advice in mind will allow you to pick one of the best tourism and hospitality dissertation topics that fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper and add to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalizing your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and be practically implemented. Please take a look at some of our sample tourism and hospitality dissertation topics to get an idea for your dissertation.

How to Structure Your Tourism and Hospitality Dissertation

A well-structured   dissertation can help students   to achieve a high overall academic grade.

  • A Title Page
  • Acknowledgements
  • Declaration
  • Abstract: A summary of the research completed
  • Table of Contents
  • Introduction : This chapter includes the project rationale, research background, key research aims and objectives, and the research problems to be addressed. An outline of the structure of a dissertation  can also be added to this chapter.
  • Literature Review: This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analyzing published and unpublished literature available on the chosen research topic in light of the research questions to be addressed. The purpose is to highlight and discuss the relative weaknesses and strengths of the selected research area while identifying any research gaps. A breakdown of the topic and key terms can have a positive impact on your dissertation and your tutor.
  • Methodology:  The  data collection  and  analysis methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter, which usually includes  research design, research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and  data analysis strategy .
  • Findings and Analysis: The findings of the research are analysed in detail under the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include  graphs ,  charts, and  tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
  • Discussion  and  Conclusion: The researcher presents his interpretation of results in this chapter and states whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section is to establish the link between the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regard to the implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
  • References:  Make sure to complete this in accordance with your University’s requirements
  • Bibliography
  • Appendices:  Any additional information, diagrams, graphs that were used to  complete the dissertation  but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How to find dissertation topics about tourism and hospitality.

To find tourism and hospitality dissertation topics:

  • Examine industry trends and challenges.
  • Explore cultural, environmental, or tech impacts.
  • Research niche areas like ecotourism or event management.
  • Analyse customer behaviour and satisfaction.
  • Consider sustainable practices.
  • Select a topic aligning with your passion and career aspirations.

What is the best research topic for tourism?

There is no one best topic, but here is a trending topic. “The Impact of Virtual Reality Technology on Tourist Experience and Destination Promotion: A Comparative Analysis.” This research topic explores how VR technology affects tourist perceptions, engagement, and decision-making and its implications for destination marketing strategies, comparing traditional methods with VR-based approaches in tourism promotion.

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Need interesting and manageable Economics dissertation topics? Here are the trending Economics dissertation titles so you can choose the most suitable one.

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The coronavirus pandemic - A critical discussion of a tourism research agenda

Affiliations.

  • 1 Copenhagen Business School, Department of Marketing (room D3.39), Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark.
  • 2 Copenhagen Business School, Department of Marketing (room D3.38), Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark.
  • PMID: 32518437
  • PMCID: PMC7272331
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104164

Unquestionable, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is one of the most impactful events of the 21st century and has tremendous effects on tourism. While many tourism researchers worldwide are currently 'Covid-19 research gap spotting', we call for more deliberateness and rigor. While we agree that the coronavirus pandemic is unique and relevant to research, we argue that not all effects are worth researching or novel to us. Previous research on crises and disasters do show similar patterns and existing theories can often very well explain the current phenomena. Thus, six illustrative examples are shown how a research agenda could look like. This includes parts where theoretical explanations from tourism are missing, as well as where we think existing knowledge might be subject to a tourism paradigm-shift due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Covid-19; Crises; Disasters; Pandemic; Research agenda.

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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  • Structural breaks in international tourism demand: Are they caused by crises or disasters? Cró S, Martins AM. Cró S, et al. Tour Manag. 2017 Dec;63:3-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.05.009. Epub 2017 May 26. Tour Manag. 2017. PMID: 32287750 Free PMC article.
  • Tourism during health disasters: Exploring the role of health system quality, transport infrastructure, and environmental expenditures in the revival of the global tourism industry. Xiong Y, Tang X. Xiong Y, et al. PLoS One. 2023 Sep 6;18(9):e0290252. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290252. eCollection 2023. PLoS One. 2023. PMID: 37672489 Free PMC article.
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  1. 50+ Trending Tourism Essay Topics & Ideas 2020

    tourism research topics 2020

  2. Australian Tourism in 2020 (Tourism Research Australia)

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  3. 100+ Tourism Research Topics: Trends and Future Directions

    tourism research topics 2020

  4. How to Write a Tourism Research Paper: Tips from Experts

    tourism research topics 2020

  5. 110 Best Tourism Research Topics and Ideas

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  6. Tourism Statistics Special Edition: Key points about the travel and

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COMMENTS

  1. 100+ Tourism Research Topics: Trends and Future Directions

    In summary, tourism research is a multifaceted learning experience that goes beyond textbooks, providing students with the skills, knowledge, and perspectives needed for a successful and impactful career in the tourism industry or related fields. 100+ Tourism Research Topics: Category Wise. Sustainable Tourism; Impact of Technology on Travel

  2. Four decades of sustainable tourism research: Trends and future

    Research in sustainable tourism has witnessed exponential growth and has covered many topics, such as the conservation of environment and natural resources and the role of multiple stakeholders (Bramwell et al., 2017; Demeter et al., 2023; Mihalic, 2020).

  3. Tourism during and after COVID-19: An Expert-Informed Agenda for Future

    Abstract. With the COVID-19 pandemic reaching a more mature, yet still threatening, stage, the time is ripe to look forward in order to identify the topics and trends that will shape future tourism research and practice. This note sets out to develop an agenda for tourism research post COVID-19.

  4. Tourism destination research from 2000 to 2020: A ...

    Popular research topics from 2000 to 2020 (frequencies of co-wording are more than 20 times). Table 4. Major research topics by centrality (centrality >0.10). No ... This study concludes that destination research is a critical branch of tourism research because it considers multiple stakeholder groups, discusses macro-level governance issues ...

  5. Tourism research after the COVID-19 outbreak: Insights for more

    Yang, 2020, Annals of Tourism Research: 10.1016/j.annals.2020.102913: ... intentions, and behaviors in tourist destinations in the new normal. Finally, the most developed topic in the field of tourism and hospitality after COVID-19, although of little relevance, is the economic impact of the pandemic on the tourism sector. ...

  6. Sustainability in hospitality and tourism: a review of key research

    The purpose of this study is to examine the scientific research related to sustainability in hospitality and tourism from 1994 to 2020 by conducting bibliometric and science mapping analyses and to discuss the implications for prospective research opportunities.,Keyword co-occurrences with 2,980 published papers collected from the Web of ...

  7. Research in tourism sustainability: A comprehensive bibliometric

    The major citing article here is Molina-Collado et al. [55], titled Sustainability in hospitality and tourism: a review of key research topics from 1994 to 2020, aimed to analyze scientific research on sustainability in hospitality and tourism from 1994 to 2020 using bibliometric analyses and scientific mapping and to discuss implications for ...

  8. Journal of Travel Research: Sage Journals

    Journal of Travel Research (JTR) is the premier research journal focusing on travel and tourism behavior, management and development. As a top-ranked journal focused exclusively on travel and tourism, JTR provides up-to-date, high quality, international and multidisciplinary research on behavioral trends and management theory.JTR is a category 4 ranked journal by the Association of Business ...

  9. COVID-19 and hospitality and tourism research: An integrative review

    Introduction. Hospitality and tourism (henceforth, H&T) research is experiencing a renaissance caused by an unexpected event, COVID-19. The pandemic, which paralyzed the industry's sectors at a global scale, causing devastating and still rising economic and operational externalities, inspired an unprecedented research explosion ( Sigala, 2020 ).

  10. A review of early COVID-19 research in tourism: Launching the

    Sigala (2020) details the impact of COVID-19 on tourism from the perspectives of three major tourism stakeholders (i.e., tourism demand, tourism operators, and destinations and policymakers) at the pandemic's response, recovery, and reset stages. The author argues that innovative and explanatory research serve different stakeholders' needs.

  11. Tourism research after the COVID-19 outbreak: Insights for more

    Yang, 2020, Annals of Tourism Research: ... Finally, the most developed topic in the field of tourism and hospitality after COVID-19, although of little relevance, is the economic impact of the pandemic on the tourism sector. Academics in the tourism industry have assessed the effects of COVID-19 on the performance of restaurants, airports, art ...

  12. Reviving tourism industry post-COVID-19: A resilience-based framework

    One, based on the gaps in the existing literature, we present the research questions for tourism research to explore different sub-topics in the context of COVID-19. Two, we present a research agenda to test our resilience-based framework ( Table 4 ) and derive propositions which can be used as testable hypotheses in future studies by others.

  13. The Impact of a Global Crisis on Areas and Topics of Tourism Research

    The latest update from Word Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in December 2020 stated: "the decline in the first ten months of 2020 represents 900 million fewer international tourist arrivals compared to the same period in 2019, and translates into a loss of US $ 935 billion in export revenues from international tourism, more than 10 times the ...

  14. Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and

    To avoid the bubble of the COVID-19 research orgasm and advance tourism research, others have also suggested to adopt inter-disciplinary (Wen, Wang, Kozak, Liu, & Hou, 2020), multi-disciplinary (Gössling et al., 2020, Hall et al., 2020) or even anti-disciplinary (Sigala, 2018) research to enable out-of-the-box, creative and flexible thinking ...

  15. Sustainability in hospitality and tourism: a review of key research

    The major citing article here is Molina-Collado et al. [55], titled Sustainability in hospitality and tourism: a review of key research topics from 1994 to 2020, aimed to analyze scientific ...

  16. Tourism during and after COVID-19: An Expert-Informed Agenda for Future

    With the COVID-19 pandemic reaching a more mature, yet still threatening, stage, the time is ripe to look forward in order to identify the topics and trends that will shape future tourism research and practice. This note sets out to develop an agenda for tourism research post COVID-19.

  17. Landscape and Tourism: Evolution of Research Topics

    Finally, in the third and final period, 2017-1 September 2020, there is a small decrease in the number of research topics, to 19, with eight of the topics from the previous period remaining (national park, rural, urban, place attachment, geotourism, linguistic landscape, religious tourism and tourist beaches), with "management" (present ...

  18. Tourism and Hospitality Dissertation Topics

    According to the World Tourism Organisation (2020), international tourism has indicated continuous growth for the tenth consecutive year, reporting 1.5 billion international tourist arrivals in 2019 and an estimated 1.8 billion international tourist arrivals by 2030 )people are forecasted to be. ... Possible research topics under this field of ...

  19. (PDF) Tourism Impacts on Destinations: Insights from a Systematic

    This paper aims to systematically review and analyze the current research on tourism impacts on destinations during 2016-2020. The Scopus database was used to search for tourism impact studies ...

  20. Tourism and Hospitality Research: Sage Journals

    Tourism and Hospitality Research (THR) is firmly established as an influential and authoritative, peer-reviewed journal for tourism and hospitality researchers and professionals. THR covers applied research in the context of Tourism and Hospitality in areas such as policy, planning, performance, development, management, strategy, operations, marketing and consumer behavior…

  21. Full article: COVID-19 and African tourism research agendas

    It is arguable that the global pandemic can be a transformational opportunity for tourism research and researchers through consideration of the myriad of questions that COVID-19 poses for the academy (Sigala, Citation 2020). Both Crouch and Sigala agree that a re-thinking of research priorities and topics in tourism is required.

  22. The coronavirus pandemic

    Unquestionable, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is one of the most impactful events of the 21st century and has tremendous effects on tourism. While many tourism researchers worldwide are currently 'Covid-19 research gap spotting', we call for more deliberateness and rigor. While we agree that the coronavirus pandemic is unique and relevant ...

  23. Full article: A systematic literature review on information service

    Despite the rapid growth of artificial intelligence in information systems (Samala et al., Citation 2020), research on factors such as robot hotel service, vlogging travel, and information security in tourism is currently inadequate (Kim et al., Citation 2013). Furthermore, the analysis of the results and the identification of the influential ...

  24. PDF Landscape and Tourism: Evolution of Research Topics

    In the first column of Figure 3, six research topics can be identified in the first period, 1992-2002. It can therefore be said that the subject studied began to be considered based on analyses focusing on "cultural heritage", "sustainability", "management", "post-war industrial tourism", "soil" and. /.

  25. Resources

    The IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology is a comprehensive classification framework for Earth's ecosystems that integrates their functional and compositional features. This new typology helps identify the ecosystems that are most critical for biodiversity conservation, research, management and human wellbeing into the future.