A Bibliometric Review of Innovations in Sustainable Tourism Research: Current Trends and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

This bibliometric review explores the existing publications regarding innovations in sustainable tourism. The aim of the review was to determine the existing research trends in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism by mapping the research on the innovations and “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism and contributing to the field by outlining the recent research trends, identifying the general topics and subtopics, and thus guiding future researchers in choosing an attractive research direction. The bibliometric analysis based on the PRISMA guidelines was provided to extract 179 all-open-access documents (articles, research papers, conference papers, and book chapters) from the Scopus database. As the research field was found to be expanding (thirty-eight documents were dated 2023 compared to one dated 2010), its attractiveness was confirmed. The analysis of the most-cited publications showed the existence of three research trends: (1) management-focused, (2) sustainability-focused, and (3) smart/ITCs-focused. Moreover, the analysis of the author keywords enabled outlining the main future research themes, namely tourism, sustainability, management, scope, innovation, smart, and method, and providing considerations for the future. For a broader dissemination of their findings, authors are encouraged to pay greater attention to these factors: inter-country collaboration, leading institution, journal choice, and topic choice.

1. Introduction

The recent global challenges necessitate all the sectors of the economy to engage in continuous innovation, thus adapting to the constantly changing and sustainability-seeking business environments [1]. Innovations have been recognized as a principal factor leading a region or a country to the growth and progress of the economy [2]. Innovations enable businesses to elaborate on the original solutions and transform the existing experiences, processes, and cultures to adapt to the constantly changing consumer requirements [3].

Although many destinations depend on tourism for survival, an increasing number of them are experiencing significant degradation; therefore, the need to adopt more sustainable tourism strategies emerges [4]. Encouraged by the emerging economic, environmental, and social requirements, sustainable tourism has become a critical approach to tourism development [5] and an important priority for governments, businesses, and tourists worldwide [6]. By prioritizing sustainability, long-term success through contributing to a more sustainable future can be achieved [7]. Although there is a growing awareness of sustainability in the tourism industry, the adoption of tourism practices is progressing at a slow pace [8]. The increased environmental concerns expressed by consumers, local inhabitants, and authorities stimulate the search for innovations in the tourism industry [9].

Innovation is an important strategic feature ensuring the growth and sustainability of tourism-like industries, offering many choices for consumers [10]. On the other hand, the contemporary tourism industry cannot be considered separately and independently from technology [11]. The “smart” concept has emerged as a condition that blurs the boundaries between physical and digital infrastructures by integrating technologies [12]. The research on smartness focuses on design rather than innovation; however, the overlap between the two concepts is still being extensively reviewed in the literature [13]. Moreover, the intersection of smartness and sustainability is substantiated by the presence of indicators that delineate, gauge, and implement their principles in urban areas and tourist destinations [14].

In 2008, the “Research Agenda for Innovation in Sustainable Tourism” [15] was published, indicating 62 issues of sustainability that should be included in a research agenda for innovation in the private sector. Despite the topic’s relevance, limited attention has been directed toward research on sustainability within the tourism industry [8]. As a consensus on how to conceptualize sustainable tourism development is still lacking in the literature [14], a thorough analysis of the domain would be beneficial. Science mapping refers to a comprehensive process of domain analysis and visualization that centers on a scientific discipline, a particular field of research, or topic areas related to specific research questions [16], and bibliometric analyses are used to illustrate and summarize past aspects and identify trends and future potential [17].

Although bibliometric studies in various disciplines are popular, studies explicitly examining the progress and trends relating to research in sustainable tourism are limited [8]. Moreover, no published documents mapping innovation and “smartness” in sustainable tourism were found in the Scopus database. Addressing this gap, our review aims to explore the existing research in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism. More specifically, our study encompassed articles, reviews, conference papers, and book chapters using (“sustainable tourism” AND innovation* OR smart) in their title, abstract, and/or keywords. The review encompassed the articles found in the Scopus database on 12 December 2023. The selected documents were analyzed to map the overall performance of the domain by identifying the most productive countries and academic institutions, prolific journals, and authors developing the domain [18]. Therefore, this review will be among the first bibliometric studies mapping the research on innovations and “smartness” in sustainable tourism and will contribute to the field by outlining the recent research trends, identifying general topics and subtopics, and thus guiding future researchers in choosing an attractive research direction.

2. Theoretical Background

Sustainability is increasingly gaining principal positions in the development of the economy and society [19]. The tourism sector, as one of the most significant for the world economy, assumes a crucial role in achieving the goals of sustainable development [20]. The literature [21] suggests that, to become globally acknowledged, “a sustainable, desirable and politically appropriate” tourism, which “reduces the negative effects of tourism activities on the environment, society and economy to achieve ecologically sustainable, economically viable, as well as ethically and socially equitable” environments, should be developed. The term “sustainable tourism” does not indicate a specific type of tourism: it describes any type of tourism that is provided within a sustainability framework [22]. Sustainable tourism means a sector that operates and is operated in line with the principles of sustainable development [23]. Sustainable tourism can be provided in the forms of ecotourism, culture tourism, rural tourism, community tourism, and other still under-researched areas, such as accessible tourism, responsustable tourism, geo-tourism, and maritime wildlife tourism [21]. Scholars also suggest green tourism, alternative tourism, and responsible tourism as forms of sustainable tourism [24].

All destinations and every type of tourism should seek to be more sustainable to become competitive [22]. A destination is often considered to be sustainable if the tourism industry does not impact negatively on the environment, human–environment interactions, and local communities [25]. Three core areas of sustainable tourism management are emphasized in the literature [23]:

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protection and enhancement of the built and natural environment. Sustainability is mainly an environmental problem [26], while tourist activities directly and indirectly impact ecosystems [27]. As tourism’s emissions are still increasing [28], sustainable tourism is related to climate change and raises related concerns [29]. Moreover, tourism causes undesirable physical and psychological consequences to the global environment, directly and indirectly affecting land cover and land use; energy use; the biotic exchange and extinction of wild species; the exchange and dispersion of diseases; and changes in the perception and understanding of the environment [27].

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supporting local communities and their culture. The development of sustainable tourist destinations should be accepted by local residents and evoke satisfaction in various sectors (e.g., transportation and waste management), thus preventing conflicts between tourists and locals [19].

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benefiting the economies of tourism destinations. Economic factors affect societal norms and dictate the expectations related to sustainable tourism [30]. Tourism is not only one of the drivers of a country’s economy; it can improve the quality of the visitor’s social life [31]. Moreover, the challenge of sustainable tourism is to maximize the tourism’s economic benefits in line with minimizing its environmental and social costs [30]. On the other hand, destination marketers and managers should work more on measures to ensure an effective contribution of the visitors to a destination’s sustainable development [32].

Sustainability is inherently multidimensional [33]. Sustainable tourism activities are based on the environmental, economic, social, and cultural aspects of development [21]; some recent research also emphasizes the technological aspect [31]. Technological advances are inducing changes in tourism by enabling tourism stakeholders to develop markets, management practices, and new competitive strategies [34]. Therefore, sustainability is increasingly identified as a key driver of innovation for companies [33]. Innovation is defined as “the operationalization of creative potential with a commercial and/or social motive by implementing new adaptive solutions that create value, harness new technology or invention, contribute to competitive advantage and economic growth” [35]. Faced with the recent global challenges, no economic sector is isolated from the continuous innovation encouraged by the modern requirements for sustainable development, and each sector is intended to meet economic, environmental, and social requirements [1].

Innovations in tourism are emerging simultaneously at all the managerial levels [36]. Moreover, for the improvement in the social and environmental performance of the entire tourism sector, not only innovation but also adoption is critical [37]. Also, the balance between exploration and exploitation, called organizational ambidexterity [32], should be maintained. Ambidextrous management effectively involves exploiting an existing strength while simultaneously exploring and developing new, divergent possibilities [38]. The exploitative side of ambidexterity is more related to incremental innovations, while exploration aligns with radical innovations [25]. As a result, organizational ambidexterity is a way to ensure the sustainability and advancement of tourism [39].

In the context of innovation, seven key technological advancements are provided in the literature [40]: fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks; artificial intelligence (AI); radio frequency identification (RFID); mobile devices, smartphones, and wearables; applications or apps (along with APIs); cryptocurrency; and blockchain. Undeniably, to enhance travel experiences, destinations are increasingly adopting smart technologies [41]. The term “smart” nowadays is widely used to describe modern technology-related developments like smartphones, smart cars, smart homes, smart infrastructure, smart cities, smart countries, etc. [42]. Therefore, smart tourism can be considered as a logical evolutionary development of traditional tourism and e-tourism in which the ground for technology-driven innovation has been established [34].

Considering the importance of a proper theoretical background for the development and adoption of innovations in the field of sustainable tourism, this review contributes to the body of knowledge by mapping the existing research and identifying the existing and emerging trends and directions for future research.

3. Materials and Methods

Systematic analyses of scientific literature are often provided for mapping the current state of the research in the domain, identification of the scopes of interest, and determination of future research trends [18,43]. Therefore, they provide substantial enhancement of the field and contribute to its development by offering bibliometrics, frameworks, and themes [44]. As extracting knowledge base and useful information from large raw datasets is one of the major challenges present today [45], the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol suggested in the literature [46,47] was applied.

The review was structured to answer the research questions that were most occurrent in bibliometric analyses [48] and enabling reaching the aim:

RQ1: What is the annual change in the number and composition of articles, reviews, conference papers, and book chapters considering innovations or “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism indicating the spread of attention directed toward research on sustainability within the tourism industry?

RQ2: What are the most productive countries, academic institutions, journals, and authors in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism?

RQ3: What are the most-used author keywords in the published documents indicating the general topics and subtopics in the literature enabling to conceptualize sustainable tourism development?

RQ4: What are the most-cited articles in the field of innovations or “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism indicating attractive directions for future research?

The review procedure was provided in five steps (Figure 1) suggested in the literature [49]. Initially, the relevant search keywords were determined. Considering the domain of tourism, the scope of “sustainable tourism” was chosen. In the first step, achieving to map the innovation dissemination in the scope, the keyword “innovation*” was chosen; as the keyword could be used in its singular and plural forms, an asterisk was attached to the search query. As innovations are often managed through technological solutions and collaborative processes, an orientation toward “smart” initiatives emerges [50]. Therefore, the keyword “smart” was included in this review as a possible replacement for “innovation*”. Previous research [18] identified “smart environment” as an emergent research trend, encompassing research on smart cities, smart tourism destinations, smart hospitality, and other forms of smart environments related to the use of smart technology and resulting in smart tourism.

In the second step, the database was chosen for the research. Considering the main databases of scientific information, Scopus is considered relatively superior in the field of the Social Sciences [51]; also, it is easier to navigate and access the documents in Scopus [52]. In the third step, the eligibility criteria were established: document type (article, conference paper, review, or book chapter), language (English), and access type (all-open-access). Only all-open-access documents were considered for the review based on several reasons. Open access means the removal of barriers (including price barriers) from accessing scholarly work and is likely to benefit science by accelerating the dissemination and uptake of research findings [53]. Open-access publishing enables researchers to reach a wider audience, including those who may not have access to traditional subscription-based academic journals [54]. Open access is becoming more accepted by researchers, universities, and government grant agencies, and authors are increasingly encouraged to submit their content to OA platforms [55]. Therefore, including the documents published in all-open-access form enables mapping the development of the domain accessible to all the researchers.

The third step enabled extracting the relevant articles from the Scopus database. The process of document extraction based on the identified criteria is provided in Figure 2.

In order to select the documents suitable for the study (i.e., meeting the eligibility criteria), the search query was entered in the Scopus database regarding the title, abstract, and keywords: TITLE-ABS-KEY (“sustainable tourism” AND innovation* OR smart) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, “English”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (OA, “all”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “cp”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “re”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ch”)). The document extraction procedure was provided on 12 December 2023. The unlimited search based on the keywords (“sustainable tourism” AND innovation* OR smart) provided 521 documents. After the language test, 15 articles were excluded; also, 306 documents were non-all-open-access. Out of 190 remaining documents, 11 were identified as books, editorials, and conference reviews; therefore, were removed from the further analysis as irrelevant to this review. Finally, 179 documents (150 articles, 14 conference papers, 11 reviews, and 4 book chapters) were selected and considered to be suitable for the review.

In the fourth step of the procedure (Figure 1), the software was chosen for the analysis. Microsoft Excel (version 2407) was chosen to calculate the total amounts provided in tables and visualizations for documents, countries, affiliations, authors, journals, keywords, and citations. The VOSViewer software (version 1.6.20) was used for bibliometric network analysis and mapping as it is widely used in bibliometric analyses of various areas [56]. Finally, the parameters for the analysis (fifth step) were determined. Performance analysis was set to be provided analyzing publication and citation trends, the contribution of countries, the contribution of institutions, and determining the top journals, frequently cited documents, and frequently cited authors. Science mapping was applied for co-country analysis, co-author analysis, and co-keyword analysis.

As this research is not an interventionary study involving animals or humans, it does not require ethics committee approval.

4. Results

After checking the document eligibility and compatibility with the search criteria, one-hundred-seventy-nine documents were selected. Based on the type of publication, one-hundred-fifty articles, fourteen conference papers, eleven reviews, and four book chapters were identified. Also, based on the publication stage, six documents were found to be in press, and one-hundred-seventy-three were finally published. The annual change in publication quantity and document types is provided in Figure 3.

Several important trends are envisioned in Figure 1. The information extracted from the Scopus database reveals that researchers’ interest in innovations in the field of sustainable tourism started to grow from 2010 (the earliest publication was found to be “Tourism and the Environment: The Innovation Connection” [57]; however, it was excluded from the review as not meeting the eligibility criterion of open access). The first publication in the analyzed period was identified as the article “Normative and Innovative Sustainable Resource Management at Birding Festivals” [58]. However, the first conference paper “Development of Slow Tourism Challenge and Operation Architecture: A Case Study on Green Island, Taiwan” [59] and the first review “Benchmarking Innovations and New Practices in Rural Tourism Development: How Do We Develop a More Sustainable and Responsible Rural Tourism in Asia?” [60] were published in 2015. Since then, the scope has gained growing scholarly attention. The year 2021 may be identified as an exception as a slight decline in the number of publications is visible. However, this decline may be explained by the global pandemic of COVID-19 that emerged in 2020 as tourism was one of the most-affected industries [61]. Only four book chapters were documented during the period: two in 2019, one in 2021, and one in 2023. Special attention should be devoted to the conference papers. There were 14 documents of this type; however, starting with 2019, they are published each year. The breakdown of the COVID-19 pandemic also requires special attention as the global lockdown revealed new horizons of opportunities for tourism, especially those based on innovations. Disasters and crises affect not only tourism companies but also foster business innovation and creativity [62].

Eighteen subject areas were identified by the authors of the selected manuscripts. Social Sciences as the subject area was identified 118 times and Environmental Science 100 times. The other popular subject areas were Energy (71 times), Computer Science (62 times), Business, Management and Accounting (51 times), Economics, Econometrics, and Finance (25 times), Engineering (21 times), and Earth and Planetary Sciences (15 times). The other subject areas were identified less than 10 times. Therefore, the review results indicate the interdisciplinarity of the domain. For example, out of the 118 documents prescribed to Social Sciences, 78 also indicated Environmental Science, 66 Energy, 51 Computer Science, 28 Business, Management, and Accounting, and 32 other subject areas such as Engineering (10), Economics, Econometrics, and Finance (9), Earth and Planetary Sciences (6), Arts and Humanities (5), Material Sciences (1), and Chemistry (1).

4.1. Contribution and Citation Trends of Countries

The extracted one-hundred-seventy-nine documents were associated with sixty-one countries. Six of these countries have published at least ten documents each, eight of the countries have published from five to nine documents, thirty of the countries have published from two to four documents each, and the remaining seventeen countries have published one document each. The most productive countries are listed in

Table 1. Countries with five or more publications on innovations in sustainable tourism.

DBR	Country	No. of Documents (2010–2023 *)	TCs	CPD	CBR
1	Italy	28	626	22.36	1
2	China	25	495	19.80	4
3	Spain	19	205	10.79	7
4	Indonesia	19	114	6.00	10
5	United Kingdom	10	263	26.30	6
6	Portugal	10	81	8.10	15
7	Greece	9	196	21.78	8
8	Taiwan	9	70	7.78	16
9	United States	7	507	72.43	3
10	Hungary	6	37	6.17	22
11	Poland	6	36	6.00	23
12	Malaysia	6	21	3.50	32
13	Pakistan	5	98	19.60	12
14	Netherlands	5	61	12.20	17

Note: DBR—country rank based on the number of documents; CBR—country rank based on the number of citations; TCs—total citations; CPD—average citations per document. * Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

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The most productive country in the scope of innovations in sustainable tourism was found to be Italy. Also, 28 publications published by Italy were cited 626 times (22.36 citations per document) as of the day of the article extraction (12 December 2023). Also, China (25 documents and 495 citations), Spain (19 documents and 205 citations), and Indonesia (19 documents and 114 citations) can be acknowledged as productive countries having published more than 10 documents. Based on the number of citations, the United States, having published only seven documents (one-fourth of Italy’s production), has been cited 507 times and reached 72.43 times per document. At the other extreme, six documents published by Malaysia were cited 21 times, resulting in 3.5 citations per document.

Considering the number of citations, documents published by eleven countries were cited more than one-hundred times (

Table 2. Countries with at least 100 citations in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism.

CBR	Country	No. of Documents (2010–2023 *)	TCs	CPD	DBR
1	Italy	28	626	22.36	1
2	India	4	508	127.00	17
3	United States	7	507	72.43	9
4	China	25	495	19.80	2
5	Canada	3	310	103.33	21
6	United Kingdom	10	263	26.30	6
7	Spain	19	205	10.79	4
8	Greece	9	196	21.78	7
9	Australia	4	194	48.50	15
10	Indonesia	19	114	6.00	3
11	Vietnam	3	109	36.33	27

Note: DBR—country rank based on the number of documents; CBR—country rank based on the number of citations; TCs—total citations; CPD—average citations per document. * Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

); twenty-five countries were cited from twenty to one-hundred times; twenty countries were cited from two to nineteen times; one country (Syrian Arab Republic) was cited once; and four countries (Egypt with two documents, Philippines with two documents, Japan with one document, and Sudan with one document) were not cited as of the day of this review.

Analyzing the country rankings based on the number of citations, four countries are to be mentioned. India, having published only four documents, overcame the United States and was cited 508 times. This resulted in 127 average citations per document (first rank according to this indicator). Canada, having published three documents with 310 citations, was fifth based on the number of citations and second based on the average number of citations per document (CPD = 103.33). Australia, with four publications, was not considered among the most productive countries; however, documents by Australian researchers were cited 194 times (CPD = 48.50), and this resulted in the ninth rank based on the number of citations. Also, Vietnam deserves a special mention. Having published only three documents, Vietnam was cited 109 times, resulting in 36.33 average citations per document.

For each of the most-cited (at least 100 citations) 11 countries, the total strength of the co-authorship links with other countries was calculated (Figure 4).

The analysis of the co-authorship links enabled the identification of four clusters: Cluster 1 (Australia, Canada, and China); Cluster 2 (Indonesia, the United Kingdom, and the United States); Cluster 3 (Greece, Italy, and Spain); and Cluster 4 (India and Vietnam). The greatest collaboration was performed by China (five links with other countries), Greece (four links with other countries), and India, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam (three links with other countries). Australia, Canada, and Spain were found to have only one link with other countries each. However, no country of the top eleven most-cited countries was found to have zero links with other countries. This finding implies that inter-country collaboration may result in greater visibility and acknowledgement by other authors.

4.2. Contribution of the Institutions

While analyzing the contributions by various institutions, 414 institutions were found to have published at least one document. Three institutions have published four documents each, and nine institutions contributed three documents each. Being not so productive, 28 institutions have published two articles each, and the remaining 374 institutions to date have contributed one article each. The most productive institutions with four and three published documents are listed in

Table 3. Institutions with three or more publications on innovations in sustainable tourism.

Country	Institution	Total Documents (2010–2023 *)	Total Citations
Italy	Sapienza Università di Roma	4	34
Poland	Silesian University of Technology	4	30
Hungary	Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences	4	24
China	Southeast University	3	191
Italy	Università degli Studi di Cagliari	3	176
Australia	Griffith University	3	156
Italy	Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II	3	128
Spain	Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria	3	46
Italy	Università degli Studi di Genova	3	38
Hungary	John von Neumann University	3	24
Morocco	Université Abdelmalek Essaadi	3	19
Portugal	Universidade do Algarve	3	15

* Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

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The twelve most productive institutions are located in eight countries. Four of the most productive institutions are Italian universities, and two are Hungarian. Other countries are represented by one productive institution. The most productive institution was found to be Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy, with four documents and 34 citations, Silesian University of Technology, Poland, with four documents and 30 citations, and Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Hungary, with four documents and 24 citations. Evidently, the quantity of published documents does not impact the number of citations; moreover, none of the three most productive institutions can be distinguished as leading in terms of their number of citations; they are neither among the universities with the same quantity of documents nor among the universities contributing most to the field.

Considering the institutions having published three articles each, documents by four institutions have accumulated more than a hundred citations. The most-cited institution of this group with 191 citations was found to be Southeast University (China), followed by Università degli Studi di Cagliari (Italy) with 176 citations, Griffith University (Australia) with 156 citations, and Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Italy) with 128 citations. At the other end of the list, Université Abdelmalek Essaadi (Morocco) and Universidade do Algarve (Portugal) can be found with 19 and 15 citations, respectively.

4.3. Contributions of the Authors

Five-hundred-seventy-two authors were found to have contributed to the development of the field of innovations in sustainable tourism. Applying Lotka’s law, it was found that the threshold indicating the number of the most productive authors was 24. In this case, twenty-two co-authors were found to have published two or more documents, and only five have published three or more. The results proved that “in a given area of science, there are a lot of authors who publish only one study, while a small group of prolific authors contributes with a large number of publications” [63].

Table 4. The most productive authors in innovation ecosystem development research.

Author Name	Total Articles *	Total Citations	H-Index	Affiliation	Country
Dávid, Lóránt Dénes	4	24	16	John von Neumann University	Hungary
Xu, Feifei	3	191	18	Southeast University	China
Pirlone, Francesca	3	38	7	Università degli Studi di Genova	Italy
El Archi, Youssef	3	19	5	Université Abdelmalek Essaadi	Morocco
Benbba, Brahim	3	19	3	Université Abdelmalek Essaadi	Morocco
Sharma, Gagan Deep	2	426	28	Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University	India
Abbas, Jaffar	2	146	48	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	China
Della Corte, Valentina	2	126	15	Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II	Italy
Del Gaudio, Giovanna	2	126	9	Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II	Italy
Sepe, Fabiana	2	126	7	Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II	Italy
He, Yong	2	123	26	School of Economics & Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology	China
He, Peng	2	123	10	Chongqing Technology and Business University	China
Martini, Umberto	2	44	11	Università di Trento	Italy
Buffa, Federica	2	44	10	Università di Trento	Italy
Chung, Namho	2	35	39	Kyung Hee University	South Korea
Spadaro, Ilenia	2	27	6	Università degli Studi di Genova	Italy
Candia, Selena	2	25	5	Università degli Studi di Genova	Italy
Szromek, Adam R.	2	16	17	Silesian University of Technology	Poland
Ragavan, Neethiahnanthan Ari	2	12	9	Taylor’s University Malaysia	Malaysia
Joime, Gian Piero	2	8	1	Universita degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi	Italy
Lo, Wei-Shuo	2	8	6	Meiho University	Taiwan
Pranita, Diaz	2	5	4	Universitas Indonesia	Indonesia
22	50	1711	-	17	10

Note: the last row of the table indicates the grand total of each column. * Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

presents the most prolific authors in the scope of innovations in sustainable tourism.

The review indicated that 22 authors with a total of 50 documents and 1711 citations can be recognized as productive in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism. These authors represent 17 institutions in 10 countries. As presented in Table 4, nine of the twenty-two productive authors represent Italian universities, four come from China, and two hail from Morocco. The most productive author can be recognized as Dávid, Lóránt Dénes, who is affiliated with John von Neumann University, Hungary, with four publications (24 citations). Four authors, namely Xu, Feifei representing Southeast University (China), Pirlone, Francesca from the Università degli Studi di Genova (Italy), and El Archi, Youssef and Benbba, Brahim, affiliated with Université Abdelmalek Essaadi (Morocco), have co-authored three articles each. However, if considering the number of citations, Sharma, Gagan Deep, affiliated with Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (India), has contributed only two documents cited 426 times. Also, Xu, Feifei from Southeast University (China) deserves to be mentioned as a co-author of two publications cited 191 times. At the other end of the list are Joime, Gian Piero, affiliated with Universita degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi (Italy), and Lo, Wei-Shuo, representing Meiho University (Taiwan), with two publications and eight citations, and Pranita, Diaz from Universitas Indonesia (Indonesia) with two publications and five citations.

4.4. Prolific Journals and Publishers

The analyzed documents were published in 81 journals. Eighteen journals have published more than one document on innovations in sustainable tourism, and thirteen have published more than two documents. The most prolific journals in the field are provided in

Table 5. The prolific journals in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism.

Source/Journal	CS, 2022	TDs *	TCs	CPD	The Most-Cited Document	TC	Publisher
Sustainability (Switzerland)	5.8	58	1115	19.22	Sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm: A bibliometric analysis [64]	112	Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), (Basel, Switzerland)
Economic Research-Ekonomska Istrazivanja	6.2	7	30	4.29	Impact of eco-innovation and sustainable tourism growth on the environmental degradation: the case of China [65]	20	Taylor & Francis (Abingdon, UK)
Journal of Sustainable Tourism	18.9	5	146	29.2	Big data or small data? A methodological review of sustainable tourism [66]	68	Taylor & Francis (Abingdon, UK)
Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes	3.5	4	40	10	The contribution of tourism towards a more sustainable and inclusive society: key guiding principles in times of crisis [67]	13	Emerald Publishing (Leeds, UK)
WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment	0.9	4	30	7.5	Eco friendly service buildings and facilities for sustainable tourism and environmental awareness in protected areas [68]	21	WIT Press (Southampton, UK)
International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning	1.7	4	29	7.25	Integrating the carrying capacity methodology into tourism strategic plans: A sustainable approach to tourism [69]	14	International Information and Engineering Technology Association (Edmonton, AB, Canada)
Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity	7.5	4	27	6.75	The sustainable business model of spa tourism enterprise—results of research carried out in Poland [70]	12	Elsevier (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Journal of Tourism Futures	8.7	4	24	6	Reset or temporary break? Attitudinal change, risk perception and future travel intention in tourists experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic [71]	11	Emerald Publishing (Leeds, UK)
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science	0.8	4	8	2	The digital management system of the tangible culture heritage for enhancing historic building governance in Malang, Indonesia [72]	5	IOP Publishing Ltd. (Conference Proceeding) (Bristol, UK)
Administrative Sciences	3.0	3	27	9	How to carry out the transition towards a more circular tourist activity in the hotel sector. The role of innovation [73]	27	Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), (Basel, Switzerland)
Tourism Recreation Research	8.9	3	24	8	Creative periphery syndrome? Opportunities for sustainable tourism innovation in Timor-Leste, an early stage destination [74]	14	Taylor & Francis (Abingdon, UK)
Geojournal of Tourism and Geosites	3.2	3	22	7.33	Developing smart tourism using virtual reality as a tourism promotion strategy in Indonesia [75]	14	Editura Universitati din Oradea (Oradea, Romania)
E3S Web of Conferences	1.0	3	0	0	-	-	EDP sciences (Conference Proceeding) (Les Ulis, France)

Note: CS—CiteScore; TDs—total documents; TCs—total citations; CPD—average citations per document; TC—times cited. * Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

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The leading journal in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism was found to be Sustainability (Switzerland) by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) with 58 published documents and 1115 citations. The most-cited document in this journal was “Sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm: A bibliometric analysis” [64] with 122 citations, which exceeded the journal’s CPD (19.22) more than six times. The second- and third-most-productive journals were found to be Economic Research-Ekonomska Istrazivanja with only seven published documents and 30 citations and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism with five documents and 146 citations, both published by Taylor & Francis. The Journal of Sustainable Tourism was also the most-cited journal in the list: it averaged 29.2 citations per article, and the most-cited article “Big data or small data? A methodological review of sustainable tourism” [66] was cited 68 times. Six journals have published four documents each, and four journals have published three documents each.

Interestingly, among the most prolific thirteen journals, two conference proceedings (one with four and one with three papers) were found. However, based on the citation indicators (total citations and average citations per document), their impact on the development of the field is scarce (Table 5).

Considering the most prolific publishers, Taylor & Francis has contributed three journals with fifteen documents, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) was the publisher of two journals with sixty-one articles, and Emerald Publishing was the publisher of two journals with eight documents. Despite Taylor & Francis having published the largest number of journals, the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), based on the number of published documents and accumulated citations, can be considered more prominent. Other publishers have contributed only one prolific journal each; however, based on the number of citations, none of them was found to be leading in the field.

4.5. Most Common Keywords

Zipf’s law is suggested to be applied to identify the threshold of the most-used keywords [76]. A total of 674 keywords were found to be used by authors. Therefore, the threshold for the most occurrent keyword count is 26 (square root of 674). The author keyword co-occurrence analysis identified 81 keywords that occurred two or more times; 28 keywords were found with three or more occurrences. Therefore, the threshold for this analysis is 28 author keywords (

Table 6. The most common keywords with more than two occurrences.

No.	Keyword	Occurrences	TLS	No.	Keyword	Occurrences	TLS
1	sustainable tourism	63	48	15	smart cities	4	5
2	tourism	21	25	16	social innovation	4	6
3	sustainability	17	18	17	tourism planning	4	3
4	innovation	16	23	18	climate change	3	3
5	smart tourism	13	13	19	destination management	3	5
6	sustainable development	13	11	20	economic growth	3	3
7	COVID-19	10	12	21	entrepreneurship	3	3
8	sustainable tourism development	9	6	22	responsible behavior	3	5
9	rural tourism	6	8	23	smart city	3	3
10	bibliometric analysis	5	7	24	smart tourism destinations	3	2
11	China	5	5	25	social media	3	4
12	cultural heritage	5	5	26	stakeholders	3	3
13	resilience	5	7	27	tourism industry	3	2
14	open innovation	4	5	28	tourism management	3	4

).

The main author keyword in the analyzed scope was found to be “sustainable tourism”. This keyword occurred 63 times and had a total link strength of 48 with the other keywords. The next keyword groups with more than 10 occurrences encompassed “tourism” (21 occurrences), “sustainability” (17 occurrences), “innovation” (16 occurrences), “smart tourism”, and “sustainable development” (13 occurrences each).

Based on the link strength, the most-often-used author keywords were grouped into six clusters (Figure 5). Cluster 1 (red) encompassed such keywords as China, economic growth, responsible behavior, rural tourism, smart city, smart tourism, sustainable development, and tourism. Cluster 2 (green) encompassed five items: entrepreneurship, innovation, social media, sustainable tourism development, and tourism industry. Cluster 3 (blue) also encompassed five keywords: cultural heritage, destination management, smart cities, social innovation, and tourism planning. Four items were grouped into Cluster 4 (yellow): bibliometric analysis, open innovation, stakeholders, and sustainability. Finally, Clusters 5 and 6 encompassed three items each. Cluster 5 (purple) included COVID-19, resilience, and tourism management, and Cluster 6 (light blue) included climate change, smart tourism destinations, and sustainable tourism.

Considering the development of the domain, it is necessary to provide a longitudinal analysis revealing how the research priorities change in response to new challenges and discoveries. Figure 6 depicts the keyword co-occurrence in different years of analysis.

As can be seen in Figure 6, the more general keywords like “tourism industry”, “sustainable development”, and “rural tourism” emerged earlier and were followed by “innovation” and “sustainable tourism”. Further, researchers’ interest in tourism was broadened to “sustainability”, “cultural heritage”, “social innovation”, and “smart tourism”. After 2021, the field of “smart”-related keywords emerged, with such keywords as “smart tourism destinations” and “smart city/cities”. Also, researchers’ attention to managerial issues such as “sustainable tourism development”, “tourism management”, and “economic growth” emerged.

Based on the most common keywords in the field, the existing research trends may be identified. A thematic analysis of the keywords was performed to identify the most popular research trends in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism (

Table 7. The most popular research trends in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism.

Research Trend	Keywords	Number of Keywords (Occurrences)
Tourism	sustainable tourism, tourism, smart tourism, sustainable tourism development, rural tourism, tourism planning, smart tourism destinations, tourism industry, tourism management	9 (125)
Sustainability	sustainable tourism, sustainability, sustainable development, sustainable tourism development, climate change, responsible behavior	6 (108)
Management	sustainable development, COVID-19, sustainable tourism development, resilience, open innovation, tourism planning, destination management, economic growth, entrepreneurship, social media, stakeholders, tourism industry, tourism management	13 (66)
Scope	rural tourism, China, cultural heritage, smart cities, destination management, smart city, smart tourism destinations, tourism industry	8 (32)
Innovation	innovation, open innovation, social innovation	3 (24)
Smart	smart tourism, smart cities, smart city, smart tourism destinations	4 (23)
Method	bibliometric analysis	1 (5)

).

The most semantically similar keywords were grouped together to identify the existing trends and characterize them. As indicated in Table 7, seven main research trends were identified: (1) tourism (nine keywords and one-hundred-twenty-five occurrences); (2) sustainability (six keywords and one-hundred-eight occurrences); (3) management (twelve keywords and sixty-two occurrences); (4) scope (eight keywords and thirty-two occurrences); (5) innovation (three keywords and twenty-four occurrences); (6) smart (four keywords and twenty-three occurrences); and (7) method (one keyword and five occurrences). The identified research trends may be used as guidelines for those researchers planning their research in innovations in sustainable tourism. Moreover, researchers may add their own keywords to the chosen category. For example, if considering the trend of management, it fairly lacks keywords related to marketing, finances, or human resource management. Also, scope can be augmented by including different kinds of tourism (e.g., maritime or eco) or different kinds of destinations (e.g., resort or Europe). The emptiest scope was identified as the method category. This research trend was characterized by only one keyword; however, considering the abundance of the various research methods, this trend can be fortified and developed further.

4.6. Citation Analysis

Out of the 179 documents, 147 were cited at least once, and that resulted in a total of 3233 citations. After extracting the square root, it was decided that the number of 56 citations per document is the lower boundary for the article to be considered prominent [18]. A total of 14 documents surpassed this threshold (

Table 8. The most-cited publications in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism.

Source	Title of the Paper	Journal	TCs *
[77]	Reviving tourism industry post-COVID-19: A resilience-based framework	Tourism Management Perspectives	426
[78]	Entrepreneurship and innovation at the base of the Pyramid: A recipe for inclusive growth or social exclusion?	Journal of Management Studies	275
[64]	Sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm: A bibliometric analysis	Sustainability (Switzerland)	110
[79]	Evolutionary analysis of sustainable tourism	Annals of Tourism Research	97
[80]	Facilitating reef tourism management through an innovative importance-performance analysis method	Tourism Management	92
[81]	The role of human–machine interactive devices for post-COVID-19 innovative sustainable tourism in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam	Sustainability (Switzerland)	80
[82]	Perspectives on cultural and sustainable rural tourism in a smart region: The case study of Marmilla in Sardinia (Italy)	Sustainability (Switzerland)	79
[83]	The influence of Islamic religiosity on the perceived socio-cultural impact of sustainable tourism development in Pakistan: A structural equation modeling approach	Sustainability (Switzerland)	76
[84]	Sustainability in tourism as an innovation driver: An analysis of family business reality	Sustainability (Switzerland)	74
[85]	Tourists’ Health Risk Threats Amid COVID-19 Era: Role of Technology Innovation, Transformation, and Recovery Implications for Sustainable Tourism	Frontiers in Psychology	70
[66]	Big data or small data? A methodological review of sustainable tourism	Journal of Sustainable Tourism	68
[86]	IoT Architecture for a sustainable tourism application in a smart city environment	Mobile Information Systems	64
[87]	Energy practices among small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises: A case of misdirected effort?	Journal of Cleaner Production	57
[88]	Sustainable wine tourism development: Case studies from the Greek Region of Peloponnese	Sustainability (Switzerland)	56

Note: TCs—total citations. * Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

).

The most-cited article in the field was found to be “Reviving tourism industry post-COVID-19: A resilience-based framework”, published in 2021. The number of citations of this article has exceeded the number of citations of the second-most-cited document by more than 1.5 times. Moreover, the second-most-cited document, “Entrepreneurship and innovation at the base of the Pyramid: A recipe for inclusive growth or social exclusion?”, was published more than a decade ago, in 2012. Due to the exponential increase in scientific output, citations become more probable from year to year [89], so it might be forecasted that the article by Sharma, Thomas, and Paul (published in 2021) [77] will keep its position for a while. The most recent document in the TOP14 list is “Tourists’ Health Risk Threats Amid COVID-19 Era: Role of Technology Innovation, Transformation, and Recovery Implications for Sustainable Tourism”, published in 2022. Since the 7 April 2022, this article has accumulated 70 citations.

Considering the journals publishing the most-cited documents, several points should be noted. Out of the fourteen most-cited articles, only four were published in journals directly related to tourism: Tourism Management Perspectives, the Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Six documents were published in Sustainability (Switzerland); also, the Journal of Management Studies, Frontiers in Psychology, Mobile Information Systems, and Journal of Cleaner Production have published one article each. Evidently, the topic of innovations in sustainable tourism is interdisciplinary, and the authors choose journals from related disciplines to disseminate their knowledge.

Among the fourteen most-cited documents, three were coping with the changes induced by COVID-19 and the post-pandemic period. Considering the influence of COVID-19 and the related global restrictions on the tourism industry [90], unsurprisingly, the post-COVID-19 topic attracts researchers’ attention. Based on their focus, the selected most-cited publications were divided into three groups: (1) management-focused, (2) sustainability-focused, and (3) smart/ITCs-focused (

Table 9. Research focuses in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism.

Document Title	TCs *	Focus
Reviving tourism industry post-COVID-19: A resilience-based framework	462	Management
Entrepreneurship and innovation at the base of the Pyramid: A recipe for inclusive growth or social exclusion?	275
Facilitating reef tourism management through an innovative importance-performance analysis method	92
Tourists’ Health Risk Threats Amid COVID-19 Era: Role of Technology Innovation, Transformation, and Recovery Implications for Sustainable Tourism	70
Energy practices among small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises: A case of misdirected effort?	57
Sustainable tourism in the open innovation realm: A bibliometric analysis	110	Sustainability
Evolutionary analysis of sustainable tourism	97
The influence of Islamic religiosity on the perceived socio-cultural impact of sustainable tourism development in Pakistan: A structural equation modeling approach	76
Sustainability in tourism as an innovation driver: An analysis of family business reality	74
Sustainable wine tourism development: Case studies from the Greek Region of Peloponnese	56
Perspectives on cultural and sustainable rural tourism in a smart region: The case study of Marmilla in Sardinia (Italy)	79	Smart/ICTs
The role of human–machine interactive devices for post-COVID-19 innovative sustainable tourism in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam	80
Big data or small data? A methodological review of sustainable tourism	68
IoT Architecture for a sustainable tourism application in a smart city environment	64

Note: TCs—total citations. * Data extracted from the Scopus database on 12 December 2023.

).

Based on the research focus, five documents were aggregated into the first group called “management”. The documents in this group deal with the managerial aspects of sustainable tourism. Similarly, the articles in the “sustainability” group are mainly oriented toward the sustainability issues of tourism. The smallest group was called “smart/ICTs” as the documents in this group were mainly related to the issues of smart environments (smart region or smart city) and/or the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in tourism.

5. Discussion

The focus on innovation and smart environments is emerging in various industries [3], including tourism [10]. Our review aimed to explore the existing research in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism by mapping the innovation and “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism research and contributing to the field by outlining the recent research trends, identifying general topics and subtopics, and thus guiding future researchers in choosing an attractive research direction. Four research questions were raised in the study, and a bibliometric analysis was performed to answer them.

As one of the gaps in the tourism literature was identified as the limited attention directed toward sustainability within the tourism industry, the first research objective (answering RQ1) was to identify the amount and spread of researchers’ attention regarding the issue. To answer this question, the annual change in the number and composition of articles, reviews, conference papers, and book chapters considering the innovations or “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism was considered as a measure. To detect the annual change in the number and composition of articles, reviews, conference papers, and book chapters considering innovations or “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism, one-hundred-seventy-nine documents were detected from the Scopus database; namely, one-hundred-fifty articles, fourteen conference papers, eleven reviews, and four book chapters were extracted. The analysis revealed that researchers’ focus on innovation in sustainable tourism emerged in 2010. Starting from then, with several fluctuations, the interest has grown steadily. The main gap in the publication numbers was documented in 2021 following the worldwide pandemic of COVID-19. Considering the composition of the paper types, articles were found to be published the most, followed by conference papers and reviews. Therefore, conference organizers are encouraged to consider this implication while selecting conference topics. As the field appears to be emergent and, therefore, not sufficiently explored, conferences on innovations and smart environments in the field of sustainable tourism are highly encouraged.

Bibliometric analyses enable finding the current directions and developments in the field of knowledge [91]. For this purpose, the second research question (RQ2) arose, and the most productive countries, academic institutions, journals, and authors in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism were analyzed and several patterns were detected.

The most productive countries in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism were found to be Italy, China, Spain, and Indonesia. However, no pattern between the number of published articles and the number of citations was identified, thus confirming the results found in the literature [89] and proving that the quality of the paper is much more important than the quantity of published documents [18]. Also, a pattern of collaboration among the most-cited countries was found. The collaboration network of countries shows the collaborating clusters [17]. The research results proved that “inter-country collaboration enables the publishing of high-quality research acknowledged by a broader audience of scholars worldwide” [18].

The analysis of the most productive institutions revealed several country-related patterns. Confirming the status of the most productive country, four of the most productive institutions were found to represent Italy. Moreover, Università degli Studi di Cagliari with three publications and one-hundred-seventy-six citations was found to be the second-most-cited institution on the list. Hungary emerged as a country with two productive institutions, although this country was not on the list of the most productive countries.

Considering the most prolific journals, the leading journal in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism was found to be Sustainability (Switzerland) by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) with 58 documents and 1115 citations, which is not a tourism-representing journal. Out of the thirteen journals having published more than two documents, only five were directly representing the tourism field. A pattern may be envisaged that researchers representing the field of tourism are seeking to spread their research by choosing more general journals. However, this pattern might have a negative impact on researchers’ reputation: publishing in more domain-related journals can reinforce the researcher’s reputation among the researchers in the field. The literature [92] suggests the existence of tourism journals that are all at least three times more heavily cited in non-tourism journals than all the other tourism journals: the Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, Tourism Geographies, the Journal of Travel Research, Tourist Studies, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, and Current Issues in Tourism. As the list is already ten years old, its revision could be beneficial.

Finally, considering the most productive authors in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism, twenty-two co-authors (out of five-hundred-seventy-two) were found to have published two or more documents, and only five have published three or more. Moreover, no leading authors were identified. However, several authors may have the potential to lead the domain in the future. Two publications by Sharma, Gagan Deep, representing Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (India), have accumulated 426 citations as of the day of the review (12 December 2023); therefore, even if the author is not very productive, his research is well acknowledged by other scholars in the field. Also, three publications by Xu, Feifei from Southeast University (China) were cited 191 times.

The chances to be cited depend on several factors [89]; therefore, to gain a higher number of citations, authors are encouraged to consider these factors:

• Inter-country collaboration. Forming a research cluster encompassing several countries not only extends the boundaries of the research to the international (or global) level but also enables generating higher-quality research and obtaining more reliable and widely applicable results.
• Leading institution. Considering inter-institutional (or inter-country) collaboration, authors are encouraged to evaluate the familiarity of the institution among scholarly society. Partnering with a well-known institution may lead to wider dissemination of the research results as the name of the institution can attract researchers’ interest in the publication [18].
• Journal choice. It is acknowledged that the multidisciplinary or more general areas representing journals may reach wider audiences considering that domain-related journals are crucial for the smoother development of the field of knowledge. Therefore, publishing in tourism-related journals should be considered regarding the further perspectives of acknowledgment by scholarship and the researcher’s reputation. The number of citations of tourism research in non-tourism disciplines is very small compared to the tens of thousands of internal citations within tourism research [92].
• Topic choice. Two extremes can be envisioned in this regard. On the one extreme, exceptionally tourism-focused research can be chosen. However, such a choice is extremely conceptual and hardly performable. Therefore, the collaboration and adoption of know-how from other disciplines can be chosen. The academic discourse surrounding tourism’s interdisciplinary approach has long piqued the interest of the scholarly community [93].

The third research question (RQ3) aimed to identify the most-used author keywords in the published documents, indicating the general topics and subtopics in the literature and enabling conceptualizing sustainable tourism development. Answering this question, the interdisciplinarity of sustainable tourism was substantiated by keyword analysis. Considering the most-used keywords, 28 author keywords (out of 674) occurred three or more times. Based on the link strength, the authors’ keywords were grouped into six clusters and were classified into seven groups representing the existing research trends. The existing research trends represent (1) tourism, (2) sustainability, (3) management, (4) scope, (5) innovation, (6) smart, and (7) method. Moreover, some keywords reflected the research focus on several categories (for example, the keyword “sustainable tourism development” was found to represent three research trends: tourism, sustainability, and management). Therefore, while choosing their research strategy, researchers are encouraged to assess the possibility of the topic contributing to one particular trend or several trends (

Table 10. The prospective research trends for the discourse in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism.

Research Focus	Key Considerations
1 Tourism	Providing research on innovations in sustainable tourism that would contribute to the literature on the development of tourism in general. The emergence of new avenues and hot topics might be introduced by the authors to lead the general development of the field as it is “[t]ime for tourism to become sustainable, not just to achieve sustainability in the business sense but also in respect to climate change” [94]. However, it is necessary to notice that, as tourism encompasses a wide range of interconnected aspects, including economics, geography, sociology, psychology, marketing, environmental science, and more [93], the latter disciplines might serve as pillars for the general development of sustainable tourism thought.
2 Sustainability	The research focus is on sustainability issues in the field of tourism. Those researchers focusing on sustainability might apply their know-how in the field of tourism. Thus, the innovativeness and technological developments from other disciplines might be adapted and, therefore, reinforce the application of innovations to contribute to tourism sustainability. Over 70% of the articles in non-tourism journals were written specifically about tourism, for example, reviewing tourism from their own disciplinary perspective [92].
3 Management	Managerial issues of sustainable tourism are of high importance for industry and academia. In order to develop and maintain a high-level scientifically based sustainable tourism management system, managerial issues must also be addressed with proper attention because it is “[t]ime for the academia to transfer its knowledge by publishing short, digestible articles for the industry” [94]. Several trends might be envisioned: coping with global crises like (but not limited to) COVID-19 [90,95] and wars [96,97]; data privacy and security [98]; work and employment opportunities [99]; stakeholder collaboration and governance [100]; tourism experience management [101]; tourist satisfaction [102]; place and territorial branding [103,104]; overtourism [105,106]; tourism monitoring [107]; tourism-related SMEs [15]; etc. Also, developing a sense of community through the development and fostering of social capital is very important [108].
4 Scope	Focusing on the scope can be considered in three main levels: (1) destination level, (2) asset level, and (3) kind of tourism level. In this regard, one particular scope that shapes the entire research process is chosen. At the destination level, research can be focused on tourism development in some particular destination, region, country, or city. Analyzing organizational ambidexterity in tourism research, authors [32] suggest providing future studies on more specific destinations (e.g., urban, rural, cultural, coastal, sport tourism, or wine tourism destinations, etc.) At the asset level, some particular scopes of interest include cultural heritage [72], national parks [109], tourism industry [105], rural tourism [60,82], etc. Finally, focusing on different kinds of tourism would also enhance the body of knowledge. Examples demonstrate the link between tourism and health, especially travel medicine [110]; war volunteer tourism [96]; dark tourism [111]; shopping tourism [112,113,114]; sport or fan tourism [115]; film tourism [116]; cruise tourism [117]; sailing tourism [118]; etc.
5 Innovation	The research in the field of sustainable tourism may focus on various kinds of innovation, thus developing a background for innovation adoption in the industry. In this regard, the authors might concentrate on researching the implementation procedures and effects of different innovations, for example, green innovation [119], technical innovations [117], regional innovations [120], and digital innovations [121] like e-sport tourism [122] or artificial intelligence (AI) or information and communication technologies (ICT) in tourism [123]. Also, the process of innovation contains issues to be explored [15]. Mihalache, M. and Mihalache, O.R. [124] propose that “the key to obtaining high performance over the long term in the tourism industry rests on firms’ ability to combine exploratory and exploitative innovation, a concept referred to as organizational ambidexterity”, and the research on exploratory and exploitative innovation, which are contradictory activities, in the sustainable tourism context is scarce.
6 Smart	Smart environments deserve special attention. The concept of “smart” encompasses technological, economic, and social advancements driven by technologies employing sensors, big data, open data, innovative connectivity methods, information exchange, and reasoning processes [125]. In the framework of innovations in sustainable tourism, researchers may focus on various smart environments, including smart cities, smart destinations, smart hospitality, smart communities, and other forms of smart environments [18]. Also, travelers’ use of smart tourism technologies enriches their travel experience and satisfaction by reducing worries and facilitating novelty seeking [125]; thus, the development of smart tourism technologies and their application possibilities should also gain researchers’ attention.
7 Method	Methodological development of tourism research is also an important focus contributing to sustainability issues. New ontological and epistemological understandings of research are necessary [15]. In this regard, the researchers can choose either to apply some particular method like bibliometric analysis [126], neurotourism [93], or case study; or contribute to the field of knowledge by introducing scales (for example, Hong Kong tourist satisfaction index [127]) and frameworks for the research. Also, under-researched groups such as children can be engaged to gain a deeper/truer understanding of visitors [15].

).

Finally, answering the fourth research question (RQ4), the most-cited articles in the field of innovations or “smart” aspects in sustainable tourism based on their focus were identified and divided into three groups: (1) management-focused, (2) sustainability-focused, and (3) smart/ITCs-focused. The latter three directions once again prove the multidisciplinarity of the field.

6. Conclusions

The study of innovations in sustainable tourism based on the all-open-access articles published in the Scopus database enables providing several conclusions. Indeed, 179 documents meeting the search requirements were found and analyzed to reveal the current research trends and outline the future agendas. The review enabled exploring the existing research in the field of innovations in sustainable tourism by answering four initially established questions. First, the research field was found to be expanding (thirty-eight documents were dated 2023 compared to one dated 2010), and its attractiveness was confirmed. Therefore, the notion in the literature of limited attention from researchers regarding sustainability within the tourism industry was disproven.

Further answering the established research questions, several problems in the development of the domain can be identified. First, out of the 61 countries that have contributed to the research in the field, only 14 have published five or more documents (Italy was found to be the leading country with twenty-eight publications), and only 11 countries were cited more than 100 times. These results indicate that, despite there being an interest in the domain worldwide, there are few actors that are able to promote the development of the domain. Also, collaboration between the publishing countries enables wider spread and recognition of the research.

The second issue to be considered concerns the publishing journals. The research results indicate that authors prefer to choose to publish in more general journals rather than tourism-focused ones: 58 documents (more than 30%) were published in Sustainability (Switzerland). Considering the interdisciplinarity of the field, such a choice is explainable; however, these circumstances might suppress the visibility and dissemination of the results of studies among tourism scholars.

The main contribution of this review to the body of knowledge in the domain of innovations in sustainable tourism is achieved by answering the research questions and is threefold. Firstly, the bibliometric information of the field was aggregated and generalized to determine the most influential countries, institutions, authors, and documents in the field. Secondly, the analysis of the most-cited publications revealed the existence of three research trends: (1) management-focused, (2) sustainability-focused, and (3) smart/ITCs-focused. Finally, the analysis of the author keywords enabled outlining the main future research themes (tourism, sustainability, management, scope, innovation, smart, and method) and considerations for the future. Therefore, scholars endeavoring to contribute to the development of this underexplored field are highly encouraged to follow these suggestions.

As one of the main limitations of this review was “all-open-access” to the documents, further development of this research might include a comparison of the themes and topics found in documents restricted by other types of access. Comparing the trends in “open” and “closed” science might reveal the existence of different research trends and also more of the emerging issues in the domain. As this review solely considered those articles accessible through the Scopus database, a comparison of the research trends in other databases would also be insightful regarding this domain. These aspects could be the highlights of further research.