| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1007873 | Annals of Tourism Research | 2011 | 22 Pages |
The field of tourism has been described as pre-paradigmatic and multidisciplinary. The acclaimed ‘poverty of tourism theory’ is attributed to the fragmentation, managerialism and lack of unifying theoretical perspectives characterising empirical research. Constituting a sub-category of tourism, cruise research is presumably subject to similar criticism. The niche character of the cruise sector implies a limited amount of domain-specific research, possibly exacerbating the relevance and intensity of those issues. Mainstream bibliographic databases were systematically queried, resulting to a collection of 145 cruise-related academic publications published between 1983 and 2009. The identified publications were analysed in terms of their content and meta-data. Apart from providing a comprehensive analysis of cruise research, the validity and relevance of the posed hypothesis are also challenged.
Research highlights► Cruise-related publications are increasing exponentially. ► Cruise research appears to follow the social science tradition of tourism. ► Managerial and business aspects of cruise operating are under-researched. ► Cruise research is at an early stage of development and is relatively fragmented. ► Involving researcher communities in a systematic review significantly improves reliability and completeness.
