ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTIONS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP TOURISM RESEARCH. A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Tourism is one of the largest global industries; it generates economic and non-economic benefits for the world's nations, creates opportunities for many related industries, and has a significant contribution to local communities’ prosperity. Despite the extraordinary difficulties posed by the global pandemic crisis, its prospects to remain one of the main providers of jobs, income, and regional or global development are still encouraging. However, tourism is at a crossroads, and the contribution of entrepreneurship can give a new meaning, a new direction to the efforts to recover and resume growth. That is why it is important to understand the nature, scope, challenges, and dimensions of tourism entrepreneurship, the trends that accompanied its evolution in recent decades, and to perceive its future prospects. The emergence of new types and forms of tourism, the expansion of digital technology in most tourism sectors, challenges in existing practices, competition, and the changing models have to be carefully understood and analysed. Tourism and entrepreneurship, two driving forces for economic development, have been under the scrutiny of this study, as we tried to map out the knowledge base yielded between 1994 and 2020 timeframe. Bibliometric methods were employed in the analysis of articles. After analysing the available articles chosen with the criteria set of the study, 322 articles concerning tourism and entrepreneurship were obtained. Based on the citation analysis made with HistCite software, we identified the most influential authors, articles, and journals.