Performance measurement in tourism firms: A content analytical meta-approach

•We perform a nineteen-year review (1996–2014) of the tourism performance literature.•A tourism performance measurement framework is proposed.•A computer-aided text analysis approach is deployed to review 978 articles.•Findings reveal that prior research has concentrated on traditional methods.•Conclusion suggests that future research agendas should be more innovative.

This paper performs a meta-analysis of tourism performance measurement by synthesising tourism and hospitality research. A framework for understanding and advancing knowledge about tourism performance measurement is presented to overview three important dimensions of the tourism performance measurement literature (unit of analysis, approaches and disciplines). Computer-Aided Text Analysis of 978 articles covering a nineteen-year period, 1996 to 2014, is used to analyse approaches and disciplinary contexts. Specifically, we aim to advance a concrete understanding of tourism firms' performance measurement literature and to assess whether the temporal trends in performance measurement literature will help position tourism firms for the emerging tourism context. We propose some key research areas to guide a future tourism performance measurement research agenda.