Tourism networks unravelled; a review of the literature on networks in tourism management studies

•This paper reviews and applies relational citation analysis on 98 published papers to unravel the field of tourism networks.•Four clusters of network studies are found, using different approaches towards networks.•Overall, findings indicate that skewed power relations are the main impediment for network development.•Empirical evidence proving the benefits of networks in tourism is lacking.•Including tourists in future empirical tourism network studies could provide this evidence.

This paper presents an overview of the current state of research into tourism networks, by providing a systematic literature review and relational citation analysis of 98 scientific papers focusing on network collaboration in tourism destinations. The aim of this study is to get a better understanding why the promising theoretical claims of potential benefits of networked collaboration in tourist destinations are so little supported by empirical evidence. This paper shows that there are two explanations for this lack of empirically proven benefits. First, progress is hampered by the lack of integration within the field of tourism network studies. The citation analysis identified the existence of different sub-fields of research. These sub-fields apply different approaches towards tourism networks, both from a theoretical and from a methodological perspective. There is little cross-fertilization between the sub-fields and integrative studies are still scarce. Second, while many studies show interesting and promising findings, the field would make more progress, if researchers would reflect more systematically on the relationship between network goals and projected outcomes, and on the most suitable methodology to test the effects of the desired network development in a comprehensive way. Since networks thrive on the perspectives of future benefits that accrue from network participation, there is a need for empirical proof of these network outcomes. Examples of best practices should be provided which visualise and explain the benefits of networks. Tangible, quantitative benefits have to be found in order to stimulate tourism entrepreneurs investing time and money in local tourism networks.