State of the art of research in the sector of thermalism, thalassotherapy and spa: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Due to the importance that this type of tourism has gained in recent years, academic researchers of different knowledge areas have focused their interest on studying, deepening and analyzing this sector by following different approaches (economic, marketing, distribution, tourism, etc.). In this context, the objective of this study is to track scientific publications that deal with research in the field of thermalism, thalassotherapy and spas, which will reveal the current state of research in this sector and define approaches and areas of knowledge from which these studies have been addressed. Bibliometric analysis was used as the research methodology to meet this objective. The international databases Web of Science and Scopus are used to identify the scientific publications under study by choosing search terms, and to develop the database for analysis. The results highlight the importance of the Scopus database for the search of bibliographic material related to the subject under study by researchers. On the other hand, very few researchers have continued with this line of research, most of them have only published one article and very significant percentage of the articles are published in journals that are part of the “tourism journals” category. The analysis highlights the need to continue developing knowledge in a sector with great growth potential.