Evolution of hospitality and tourism technology research from Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology: a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis

Abstract

\nPurpose\nInformation and communication technologies have been widely implemented and made radical changes for several decades in the hospitality and tourism industry. This rapid development also generates considerable data in social media. This trend opens the door to analyze unstructured data and gain increased attention of a qualitative research approach from hospitality and tourism researchers and industry professionals. Therefore, this paper aims to describe how a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDA) approach can be used in the hospitality and tourism technology literature to uncover the trends and thematic concepts of hospitality and tourism technology research and their dynamics in Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology (JHTT)\n\n\nDesign/methodology/approach\nTo achieve the proposed research goals, the current study used CAQDA software, Leximancer, to analyze 218 articles published in JHTT between Volume 1(1) in 2010 and Volume 10(4) in 2019. Based on the rigorous CAQDA processes, the study performed the thematic analysis using all articles and subgroup analyses in the five-year periods.\n\n\nFindings\nUsing CAQDA, the study reveals the critical research trends and insights on hospitality and tourism technology for 10\u2009years in the JHTT. The findings of this study can provide strong evidence of what hospitality and tourism technology research topics have been examined and how these topics were connected and changed over time. More importantly, the current study illustrates how the CAQDA approach can be applied to uncover the hidden trends and thematic concepts from text data in the hospitality and tourism literature.\n\n\nOriginality/value\nThis study is the first attempt to apply CAQDA software to identify research trends and thematic concepts and gain insights from past JHTT’s articles. Moreover, this study applies this software to describe how hospitality and tourism researchers can use one of the modern computer-assisted qualitative techniques. Based on the findings of this study, theoretical and methodological implications for hospitality and tourism researchers are provided. More importantly, the current study presents the specific guidelines of how the CAQDA approach can be used for the literature review.\n