The use of bibliometric, systematic and integrative literature reviews to understand the concept of tourist information

Abstract

This paper presents how the use of three types of literature review (bibliometric, systematic and integrative) has contributed to understanding the use of the concept tourist information in the literature. Thus, the definitions and applications of each review are presented including how they were used to mapping literature, including in the methodology section the research process to analyze the papers published in two international journals during the period of 1970 to 2015, through the cross-checking of the contributions given by each of the review methodologies. The results detail the evolution of the concept in tourism publications in number and problems researched, also indicating that tourist information is considered common knowledge in the literature, given the absence of its definition in the articles analyzed. In addition, it was possible to identify, according to the reviewed papers, what was produced and published about tourist information in the analyzed journals, presenting and summarizing the path of the concept and its main investigation contexts. Research methodologies in tourism and changes related to the production of scientific knowledge in the field are also discussed.