Analysis of Global Research Trends on COVID-19 and Tourism : Using Keyword Network Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to understand the emerging COVID-19 research in tourism and to identify research gaps. To this aim, we selected the final 62 articles published between 1 January and 17 August 2020 in 28 different journals and conducted a keyword network analysis based on the keywords of the paper. Major findings are that first, most of the COVID-19 tourism studies used a qualitative approach. Second, major topics included the impacts of COVID-19 on tourism, crisis management, and tourism recovery, health security in tourism, tourism transformation, and sustainable tourism. Also, the keyword of ‘Sustainability’ had a high value in each measure of the centrality analyses with a strong degree of connection to other nodes, demonstrating it as the central node in the network structure. In other words, this theme deals with the discussion of suggesting new paths for tourism and new ways of developing the tourism industry in order to maintain the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of tourism in the era of COVID-19.