Tourism Routes Characterisation and Concepts

A Scoping Review

Abstract

The concept of routes in tourism has a broad understanding that goes from a journey between two or more points to a formal network of stakeholders. This scoping review provides an overview of the literature on tourism routes by analysing their characterisation and conceptualization. The review includes documents from four databases, written in English, published until May 2020, and focusing on tourism routes as organizations of stakeholders. Based on 194 documents, regional scale routes under the food and drink thematic group are identified as the commonest, followed by the pilgrimage and history thematic groups on a transnational scale. There are neither universally accepted concepts nor terms to define routes in the tourism field.