Pivotal Issues of Water-Based Tourism in Worldwide Literature

Abstract

Studies on water-based tourism have recently gained consistent attention from scholars. Its development relies on water segmentation of areas that could potentially become a tourist attraction or even an alternative source of renewable energy. In short, the ideas of water-based tourism, as presented theoretically, conceptually, and practically by scholars, have been widespread; however, studies to map the core issues in the literature have not yet been undertaken. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the progress of water-based tourism literature around the world. Furthermore, we used the scientometric and literature review approaches, along with the assistance of two qualitative applications, NVivo and VOSViewer, as tools for visualizing the code of 106 documents in Scopus. Our core findings showed that water-based tourism studies have undergone rather substantial developments in the last decade. Moreover, our study also noted that there were eight pivotal issues that had been identified, classified as follows: “areas”, “water”, “economic”, “value”, “tourist”, “quality”, “development”, “management”, and “resources”. We believe that this water-based tourism segmentation provides potential opportunities for regions that have water resources or water utilization as their main developable asset, and that water segmentation provides great potential development for community economic growth, increased tourist visits, and a contribution to local income. Therefore, it is necessary to request that the authorities engage other agencies in order to support the best economic and practical realities associated with procuring resources, directly or indirectly. This paper also introduces insightful future directions for water-based tourism studies.