Female travellers in hospitality and tourism industry: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Female tourism is gaining momentum in the world. Thus, a review of female tourism is essential to explore future research directions. The paper discusses the evolution of female tourism research from the early 1980s to 2022 through different analytical methods. The 116 articles published in the list of Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journals were collected. A systematic quantitative assessment of 116 articles was conducted using HistCite, and research themes were identified using VOSviewer. Qualitative content analysis was conducted to trace the growth of research, understand the past research development of each research theme, and identify research gaps for further research. The results show that current female tourism research can be divided into three research themes: motivation, risk, and sexuality. The motivations for young female travellers, solo female travellers, and middle-aged female travellers are discussed. In the atmosphere of gender equality, current female tourism research in risk and sexuality contains contradictory viewpoints with past studies as a result of changing times. A research agenda in four potential research areas is recommended. This review contributes to female tourism research by providing researchers with literature to guide and support further research.