COVID-19 Outbreak and Tourism: The State of the Art

Abstract

This paper looks at tourism and hospitality pandemic literature and asks two research questions. The first identifies the main topics analyzed, while the second investigates future research avenues. Manual coding of 230 studies using a grounded theory approach identified 11 topics. An empirical research framework was proposed and organized around four blocks: companies, tourists, destinations, and the whole tourism system. Current literature focuses mainly on the business aspect and analyzes the strategies implemented by companies to deal with the coronavirus outbreak. Intention to travel is the main focus for the tourist block, while impact studies attracted the majority of studies at the destination level. The main tourism topic that is analyzed is post-coronavirus tourism. The conclusions of this paper identify possible research avenues for each topic (analytic research agenda) and also consider the framework as a whole (holistic value).