Bibliometric analysis of trends in COVID-19 and tourism

Abstract

The aim of the research is the bibliometric analysis of research on COVID-19 and tourism in order to detect research lines and gaps, the main authors, the countries with the highest number of publications, the most analysed study areas, the journals with the most number of publications and the articles with the highest number of citations. The Web of Science (WOS) database was used to extract the publications and the VOSviewer software was used to represent the data analysed. The keywords used resulted in 1792 publications that were subjected to a filtering process to avoid introducing articles that did not meet the inclusion criteria. Finally, the analysis was composed by 921 publications. The analysis locates a new line of research that visualizes the crisis as an opportunity to propel a new, more sustainable tourism. Tourist perception and the risk of transmission, together with the analysis of measures and policies are other of the most researched topics. China is the country with the most articles on COVID-19 and tourism according to the author’s main affiliation, as well as being the most analysed area of study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first article to carry out a bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 and tourism publications.