From Knowledge Structure to Pathmaking Tourism Scholarship: Editorial Renewal and Future Research Directions in Enlightening Tourism
Keywords:
Pathmaking tourism scholarship, Enlightening tourism, Co-word analysis, Bibliometric mapping, Knowledge structure, Tourism futures, Sustainable tourism, Responsible destination transformation, a
Abstract
This editorial article maps the accumulated knowledge structure of Enlightening Tourism. A Pathmaking Journal (ET) and translates it into a forward-looking research agenda for the journal’s renewed editorial phase. The article is grounded in a corpus of 143 ET articles, organised into 53 pre-Scopus articles published between 2011 and 2017 and 90 Scopus-indexed articles published between 2018 and 2026. Author keywords were analysed through co-word analysis, keyword co-occurrence networks, Greedy Modularity clustering, robustness comparison with Louvain community detection, Callon strategic diagramming and Future Research Initiatives (FRI) simulations. This methodological integration represents a distinctive contribution of the paper: rather than using bibliometric mapping only to describe the journal’s past, it combines retrospective knowledge-structure analysis with forward-looking FRI simulations to identify under-connected concepts that may inform future research directions, editorial priorities and scholarly development. The results identify 565 unique keywords, 66 retained keywords occurring at least twice, 115 co-occurrence linkages and 11 thematic clusters. Tourism, satisfaction, sustainable tourism and sustainability emerge as basic themes; hotels, India and Antalya appear as niche themes; and sustainable development and COVID-19 occupy the emerging or declining quadrant. The FRI simulations indicate that destination image, tourism marketing, performance, customer satisfaction, travel motivation, perceived risk and smart destinations may operate as bridging concepts for future research. We argue that the next stage of ET should not be understood as a break with its past, but as a disciplined transformation of its accumulated knowledge into a clearer intellectual direction. Pathmaking tourism scholarship is proposed as a way of studying how destinations, firms, communities, ecosystems and institutions create, transform and govern responsible development pathways under conditions of uncertainty, technological change and societal transition. In this renewed phase, ET will prioritise manuscripts that move beyond tourism as an empirical setting and use tourism to advance theory, methods, evidence, policy and responsible practice
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References
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Buhalis, D., O’Connor, P. & Leung, R. (2023). Smart hospitality: from smart cities and smart tourism towards agile business ecosystems in networked destinations. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 35(1), 369-393. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2022-0497
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Chen, C., Chen, Y., Horowitz, M., Hou, H., Liu, Z. & Pellegrino, D. (2009). Towards an explanatory and computational theory of scientific discovery. Journal of Informetrics, 3(3), 191-209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2009.03.004
Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business School Press.
Clauset, A., Newman, M. E., & Moore, C. (2004). Finding community structure in very large networks. Physical Review E—Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 70(6), 066111.
Cobo, M. J., López-Herrera, A. G., Herrera-Viedma, E. & Herrera, F. (2011). An approach for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the Fuzzy Sets Theory field. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 146-166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2010.10.002
Cohen, W. M. & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128-152. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393553
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Duplock, R. (2026). Modern analytical approaches to predict and understand entrepreneurial behaviour: Evidence from GEM data [PhD by publication, Queensland University of Technology].
Enlightening Tourism. A Pathmaking Journal. (2026). About the journal and aims and scope. University of Huelva Press. https://doi.org/10.33776/et
Garud, R. & Karnøe, P. (2001). Path creation as a process of mindful deviation. In R. Garud, & P. Karnøe, (Eds). Path dependence and creation (pp. 1-38). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A. & Karnøe, P. (2010). Path dependence or path creation? Journal of Management Studies, 47(4), 760-774. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00914.x
Gössling, S., Scott, D. & Hall, C. M. (2021). Pandemics, tourism and global change: A rapid assessment of COVID-19. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1758708
Grant, R. M. (1996). Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), 109-122. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250171110
Gretzel, U., Sigala, M., Xiang, Z. & Koo, C. (2015). Smart tourism: Foundations and developments. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 179-188. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-015-0196-8
Hall, C. M. & Williams, A. M. (2008). Tourism and innovation. Routledge.
Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2020). Socialising tourism for social and ecological justice after COVID-19. Tourism Geographies, 22(3), 610-623. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1757748
Hjalager, A.-M. (2010). A review of innovation research in tourism. Tourism Management, 31(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2009.08.012
Inversini, A. & Buhalis, D. (2025). Digital technology and regenerative tourism. In F. Fusté-Forné & A. Hussain, (Eds). Routledge Handbook of Regenerative Tourism (pp. 531-542). Routledge. Abingdon (UK). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003469810-43
Lo, A., Huang, Z., Buhalis, D., Thomas, N. & Pang, J. M. (2025). Mapping the landscape of employer value propositions in Asian hotels through online job postings analysis. Tourism Management, 110, Article 105184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2025.105184
López Herrera, A. G., Cobo Martín, M. J., Herrera Viedma, E., Herrera Triguero, F., Bailón Moreno, R., & Jiménez Contreras, E. (2009). Visualization and evolution of the scientific structure of fuzzy sets research in Spain, Information Research, 14(4), 421. https://digibug.ugr.es/handle/10481/33032
Nonaka, I. (1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5(1), 14-37. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.5.1.14
Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press.
Ritchie, B. W., & Jiang, Y. (2019). A review of research on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management. Annals of tourism Research, 79, 102812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.102812
Sebastian, Y. & Chen, C. (2021). The boundary-spanning mechanisms of Nobel Prize winning papers. PLOS ONE, 16(8), Article e0254744. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254744
Sigala, M. (2020). Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research. Journal of Business Research, 117, 312-321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.06.015
Smith, N. R., Zivich, P. N., Frerichs, L. M., Moody, J. & Aiello, A. E. (2020). A guide for choosing community detection algorithms in social network studies: The question alignment approach. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59(4), 597-605. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.04.015
Sydow, J., Schreyögg, G. & Koch, J. (2009). Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box. Academy of Management Review, 34(4), 689-709. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.34.4.zok689
Teece, D. J. (2007). Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of sustainable enterprise performance. Strategic Management Journal, 28(13), 1319-1350. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.640
Teece, D. J., Pisano, G. & Shuen, A. (1997). Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), 509-533. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199708)18:7<509::AID-SMJ882>3.0.CO;2-Z
Tribe, J. (1997). The indiscipline of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(3), 638-657. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-7383(97)00020-0
van Eck, N. J. & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84(2), 523-538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3
Vargas-Sánchez, A., Porras-Bueno, N. & Plaza-Mejía, M. Á. (2009). Understanding residents’ attitudes toward the development of industrial tourism in a former mining community. Journal of Travel Research, 47(3), 373-387. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287508322783
Vargas-Sánchez, A., Porras-Bueno, N. & Plaza-Mejía, M. Á. (2011). Explaining residents’ attitudes to tourism: Is a universal model possible? Annals of Tourism Research, 38(2), 460-480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2010.10.004
Vecchiato, R. (2012). Environmental uncertainty, foresight and strategic decision making: An integrated study. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 79(3), 436-447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2011.07.010
Yeoman, I. (2012). 2050: Tomorrow’s tourism. Channel View Publications.
Zupic, I. & Čater, T. (2015). Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organizational Research Methods, 18(3), 429-472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114562629
Baggio, R., Scott, N. & Cooper, C. (2010). Network science: A review focused on tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 37(3), 802-827. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2010.02.008
Blondel, V. D., Guillaume, J.-L., Lambiotte, R. & Lefebvre, E. (2008). Fast unfolding of communities in large networks. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2008(10), Article P10008. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/2008/10/P10008
Buhalis, D. (2025). 80 years of tourism review - transformative and regenerative power of smart tourism. Tourism Review, 80(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-01-2025-905
Buhalis, D. & Amaranggana, A. (2015). Smart tourism destinations enhancing tourism experience through personalisation of services. In I. Tussyadiah, & A. Inversini, (Eds). Information and communication technologies in tourism 2015 (pp. 377-389). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14343-9_28
Buhalis, D. & Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet - The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29(4), 609-623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2008.01.005
Buhalis, D., O’Connor, P. & Leung, R. (2023). Smart hospitality: from smart cities and smart tourism towards agile business ecosystems in networked destinations. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 35(1), 369-393. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-04-2022-0497
Callon, M., Courtial, J. P. & Laville, F. (1991). Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemistry. Scientometrics, 22, 155-205. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02019280
Carvajal Trujillo, E. (2026). Editorial Note. Enlightening Tourism. A Pathmaking Journal. University of Huelva Press.
Casali, G. L. & Perano, M. (2021). Forty years of research on factors influencing ethical decision making: Establishing a future research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 132, 614-630. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.07.006
Chen, C. (2012). Predictive effects of structural variation on citation counts. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(3), 431-449. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21694
Chen, C., Chen, Y., Horowitz, M., Hou, H., Liu, Z. & Pellegrino, D. (2009). Towards an explanatory and computational theory of scientific discovery. Journal of Informetrics, 3(3), 191-209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2009.03.004
Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business School Press.
Clauset, A., Newman, M. E., & Moore, C. (2004). Finding community structure in very large networks. Physical Review E—Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 70(6), 066111.
Cobo, M. J., López-Herrera, A. G., Herrera-Viedma, E. & Herrera, F. (2011). An approach for detecting, quantifying, and visualizing the evolution of a research field: A practical application to the Fuzzy Sets Theory field. Journal of Informetrics, 5(1), 146-166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2010.10.002
Cohen, W. M. & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128-152. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393553
Craft, J. L. & Shannon, K. R. (2025). An examination of the 2012–2022 empirical ethical decision‐making literature: A quinary review. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 34(3), 701-721. https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12676
Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N. & Lim, W. M. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285-296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.04.070
Duplock, R. (2026). Modern analytical approaches to predict and understand entrepreneurial behaviour: Evidence from GEM data [PhD by publication, Queensland University of Technology].
Enlightening Tourism. A Pathmaking Journal. (2026). About the journal and aims and scope. University of Huelva Press. https://doi.org/10.33776/et
Garud, R. & Karnøe, P. (2001). Path creation as a process of mindful deviation. In R. Garud, & P. Karnøe, (Eds). Path dependence and creation (pp. 1-38). Lawrence Erlbaum.
Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A. & Karnøe, P. (2010). Path dependence or path creation? Journal of Management Studies, 47(4), 760-774. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00914.x
Gössling, S., Scott, D. & Hall, C. M. (2021). Pandemics, tourism and global change: A rapid assessment of COVID-19. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1758708
Grant, R. M. (1996). Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), 109-122. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250171110
Gretzel, U., Sigala, M., Xiang, Z. & Koo, C. (2015). Smart tourism: Foundations and developments. Electronic Markets, 25(3), 179-188. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-015-0196-8
Hall, C. M. & Williams, A. M. (2008). Tourism and innovation. Routledge.
Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2020). Socialising tourism for social and ecological justice after COVID-19. Tourism Geographies, 22(3), 610-623. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1757748
Hjalager, A.-M. (2010). A review of innovation research in tourism. Tourism Management, 31(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2009.08.012
Inversini, A. & Buhalis, D. (2025). Digital technology and regenerative tourism. In F. Fusté-Forné & A. Hussain, (Eds). Routledge Handbook of Regenerative Tourism (pp. 531-542). Routledge. Abingdon (UK). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003469810-43
Lo, A., Huang, Z., Buhalis, D., Thomas, N. & Pang, J. M. (2025). Mapping the landscape of employer value propositions in Asian hotels through online job postings analysis. Tourism Management, 110, Article 105184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2025.105184
López Herrera, A. G., Cobo Martín, M. J., Herrera Viedma, E., Herrera Triguero, F., Bailón Moreno, R., & Jiménez Contreras, E. (2009). Visualization and evolution of the scientific structure of fuzzy sets research in Spain, Information Research, 14(4), 421. https://digibug.ugr.es/handle/10481/33032
Nonaka, I. (1994). A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science, 5(1), 14-37. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.5.1.14
Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press.
Ritchie, B. W., & Jiang, Y. (2019). A review of research on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management: Launching the annals of tourism research curated collection on tourism risk, crisis and disaster management. Annals of tourism Research, 79, 102812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2019.102812
Sebastian, Y. & Chen, C. (2021). The boundary-spanning mechanisms of Nobel Prize winning papers. PLOS ONE, 16(8), Article e0254744. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254744
Sigala, M. (2020). Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research. Journal of Business Research, 117, 312-321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.06.015
Smith, N. R., Zivich, P. N., Frerichs, L. M., Moody, J. & Aiello, A. E. (2020). A guide for choosing community detection algorithms in social network studies: The question alignment approach. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59(4), 597-605. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.04.015
Sydow, J., Schreyögg, G. & Koch, J. (2009). Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box. Academy of Management Review, 34(4), 689-709. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.34.4.zok689
Teece, D. J. (2007). Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of sustainable enterprise performance. Strategic Management Journal, 28(13), 1319-1350. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.640
Teece, D. J., Pisano, G. & Shuen, A. (1997). Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 18(7), 509-533. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199708)18:7<509::AID-SMJ882>3.0.CO;2-Z
Tribe, J. (1997). The indiscipline of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(3), 638-657. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-7383(97)00020-0
van Eck, N. J. & Waltman, L. (2010). Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics, 84(2), 523-538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3
Vargas-Sánchez, A., Porras-Bueno, N. & Plaza-Mejía, M. Á. (2009). Understanding residents’ attitudes toward the development of industrial tourism in a former mining community. Journal of Travel Research, 47(3), 373-387. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287508322783
Vargas-Sánchez, A., Porras-Bueno, N. & Plaza-Mejía, M. Á. (2011). Explaining residents’ attitudes to tourism: Is a universal model possible? Annals of Tourism Research, 38(2), 460-480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2010.10.004
Vecchiato, R. (2012). Environmental uncertainty, foresight and strategic decision making: An integrated study. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 79(3), 436-447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2011.07.010
Yeoman, I. (2012). 2050: Tomorrow’s tourism. Channel View Publications.
Zupic, I. & Čater, T. (2015). Bibliometric methods in management and organization. Organizational Research Methods, 18(3), 429-472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114562629
Published
2026-08-13
How to Cite
Perano, M., García de Soto Camacho, E., Casali, G. L., & Duplock, R. (2026). From Knowledge Structure to Pathmaking Tourism Scholarship: Editorial Renewal and Future Research Directions in Enlightening Tourism . ENLIGHTENING TOURISM. A PATHMAKING JOURNAL, 16(1), I-XIII. https://doi.org/10.33776/EUHU/et.v16i1.9796
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