Accessible tourism: a bibliometric review (2008–2020)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reveal the knowledge evolution process, research hotspots and future trends in the accessible tourism research literature from 2008 to 2020. Design/methodology/approach A total of 213 articles on accessible tourism were selected from the core collection database of Web of Science (WoS) and analyzed using CiteSpace. Findings Over the 13-year period between 2008 and 2020, an increasing number of studies have been published concerning accessible tourism, but the overall base is still small. The research content mainly includes six modules. Among institutions, the University of Technology Sydney has published the largest number of papers. Cooperation among countries involves the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, Portugal and China. Tourism Management is the leading journal for disseminating research on accessible tourism. Definition of “Accessible tourism” and the different scope of this phenomenon are re-discussed. In recent years, “experience” and “participation” have become the “new favorites” in accessible tourism research, which could reveal insights into future research directions. Research limitations/implications The sampling frame was defined in terms of the WoS database and even though this is an important database for global academic information, in the big data era, the authors may have to integrate information from multiple sources to comprehensively reveal and understand knowledge maps. Second, because of the operational constraints of the CiteSpace software, the authors only selected outputs published in peer-reviewed journals, excluding other published works, such as books and conference papers. Finally, because of the language restrictions of the authors, this research is limited to journals published in the English language. Practical implications Practically, the results of this study made a conclusion of accessible tourism research so that the researchers can easily know what has currently been done and what future research can do. Tourism managers can also understand the demands and the constraints of tourism for the people who have barriers to travel. They can supply more specific products for the accessible tourism and further promote the construction of barrier-free travel environments. Originality/value This paper unifies the literature on senior tourism and people with disabilities tourism, and uses CiteSpace to construct data and network visualizations, including a burst and dynamic analysis for the period covered by the sample. Furthermore, this paper proposed a more diversified accessible tourism.