ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the family tourism research landscape including a timeline, authorship, study subjects, research topicality, theories and methodological practices. It discusses missing links and future research opportunities in family tourism. When breaking down by countries, it seems there is a high concentration of family tourism researchers from the USA (29.35%) and UK (11.96%), followed by researchers from Australia (7.61%), New Zealand (7.07%) and China (6.52%). Based on our analysis, family tourism researchers have embraced both qualitative (46%) and quantitative (46%) research methods in their investigations. Another interesting result is that our analysis shows that family tourism research largely addresses a few broad themes, namely, children, family role, destination activities, travel companionship and experiences. During the period 1975-1984, there were only two themes that the researchers focused on: adverse effects of family tourism and family role influences.
