Research in a culturally diverse world: reducing redundances, increasing relevance

Tourism is a key industry that creates better futures in many countries of the world, both socially and economically. Conducting rigorous and relevant research that develops knowledge and informs stakeholders (including businesses, policy makers, regulators, non-governmental agencies and the general public, just to name a few) on how to improve their practices is therefore of critical importance. Indeed, hundreds of researchers across the globe conduct tourism-related research. The number of researchers continues to increase with more countries joining the international tourism research community. For their work, they have available an ever-increasing number of academic publication outlets. According to Bob McKercher, we currently count more than 250 tourism and hospitality journals. In their workplaces, researchers are increasingly faced with expectations relating to the number of manuscripts they should be publishing per annum, the quality of the journals they should be publishing in and the number of citations their work should be generating. These academic performance indicators, however, encourage outputs that are often of limited use to tourism stakeholders outside of academia and are therefore only acknowledged within a very small community.