Do Tourism and Project Management Need Each Other?

Abstract

While the relationship between tourism and project management (PM) seems logical in business practice, it seems that academic literature does not follow this reasoning. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is an interrelationship between tourism and PM in the academic literature, and if so, what is the nature of this connection. To reach this objective, the author examined ten top-ranked PM and tourism journals represented in Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). PM journals do not recognize tourism as an attractive field of research because only nine papers (out of 2,995 published) refer to tourism or tourists. Additionally, from 11,332 papers published in tourism journals, 269 papers allude to projects mostly focusing on three major themes: (1) tourism development projects, (2) local communities, and (3) tourist experiences. However, the term “project” refers mostly to studied cases, while Knowledge Areas (PMKAs), which are the core of PM, are mentioned only sporadically. The findings suggest that the connection between tourism and PM in academia is not as strong as the business practice would suggest. Academics should pay more attention to the fact that PM knowledge needs to be applied and integrated into the tourism industry and its projects.