Abstract
The tourism industry has received increasing attention as it has become one of the fastest developing business sectors around the world. Service quality in tourism has come to be regarded as an important impetus for economic growth; however, the focus on tourism service quality has not yet been satisfactorily or comprehensively reviewed. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review combining bibliometric, citation network and keyword network analysis. We selected the top five tourism journals from the SCOPUS database and then collected papers according to their keywords. Our results revealed the critical issues, topics, and changes over time regarding research on tourism service quality. The critical issues included the important impact of service quality on tourist behavior and service quality evaluation, and topics comprised (1) tourist satisfaction, (2) sustainable issues in tourism, (3) value of service quality for customers, (4) restaurant service quality, (5) customers’ perceptions of tourism, (6) service quality evaluation in tourism, and (7) service quality’s influence on customer behavior. Furthermore, the keyword network analysis results revealed the most influential keywords.
Highlights
During the last few decades, the tourism industry has become extremely economically relevant, as it has become one of the fastest developing areas in the contemporary business environment
Service quality has been established as an important economic impetus of tourism
To explore how this factor has been represented in past tourism literature, we conducted a systematic literature review combining bibliometric, citation network, and keyword network analysis
Summary
During the last few decades, the tourism industry has become extremely economically relevant, as it has become one of the fastest developing areas in the contemporary business environment. Global international tourist arrivals in 2013 reached a record of 1.087 billion, whereas international tourism revenue constituted a record US $1.159 billion in the same year [1]. This shows that tourism can significantly contribute to the economic growth of tourist destinations by increasing employment opportunities, developing infrastructure, and attracting foreign exchange earnings [2]. Our study’s main objective was to identify the most influential studies as well as both broad and specific issues regarding tourism service quality and explore this research field’s current and future directions and trends through a systematic literature review
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