This paper aims at exploring the definition, characteristics and stages of qualitative data analysis in tourism research. The paper is based on the writer’s experience in implementing qualitative data analysis as well as literature review on qualitative research methodology. Qualitative researchers may deal with different and rich data from qualitative methods. However, many qualitative researchers do not understand how to produce knowledge from qualitative data. For this reason, the result of a qualitative research tends to be descriptive without contributing to the advancement of knowledge. Thematic analysis is considered as a dominant form of analysis in qualitative research. Its stages consist of data reduction, organization and interpretation. Coding is the key for succeeding the qualitative data analysis. Hence, examples of qualitative data analysis in tourism research are provided to give practical stages of how to analyze qualitative data.