Recent trends of hospitality and tourism research literature on China content analysis

Abstract

As tourism planning, marketing, and product development become increasingly complex in the tourism industry in China, tourism-related research becomes a critical function in providing needed information for decision-making. The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the work that has been done to date related to hospitality and tourism research on China from published articles in six major research journals. This kind of study will be helpful to identify both the advancement and some gaps in this field, thus help to establish a more efficient, effective, and accountable tourism research to support practical work. One hundred articles on Chinese tourism were analyzed using the content analysis method. Cross-tabulation statistical method was used in the study. The major findings of this study are: 1. The number of empirical research on Chinese tourism was increased during the years. Along with this, more diversified study methods such as survey and field study were used. 2. Recent tourism literature on China makes increased use of more sophisticated statistical techniques. On the other hand, there appears to be little use of multivariate statistical techniques in this field, suggesting that the field of Chinese tourism research is still lacking in rigorous and sophisticated quantitative research.