Original Scientific Article
Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience:
A Bibliometric Analysis
Damir Krešić
Institute for Tourism, Croatia
damir.kresic@iztzg.hr
Matina Gjurašić
Institute for Tourism, Croatia
matina.gjurasic@iztzg.hr
‘Slow tourism’ is a holistic tourism concept that promotes sustainability in all as-
pects of a traveller’s journey. It is a promising alternative tomass tourismwith which
tourists, destination managers, and tourism service providers are willing to engage.
In academic research, there is little consensus on what ‘slow’ means and how it is
practiced or interpreted in relation to different tourism contexts, cultures, and mo-
bilities. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the concept of slow tourism, its evo-
lution and current scope. Moreover, the paper presents a new insight into scientific
production through bibliometric analysis, not previously fully clarified in hospitality
and tourism research. Data for the study is generated fromEnglish-language journal
articles that were produced from a Scopus database search of specific keywords as-
sociated with slow tourism. The findings indicate that the research interests on slow
tourism is growing remarkably and is related to slow travel and food, sustainability,
and an immersive travel experience.
Keywords: slow tourism, sustainability, local food, immersive travel experience,
bibliometric analysis
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.15.323-333
Introduction
Tourism behaviour has changed during the covid-
19 period, resulting in the bolstering of proximity
tourism. There has been an increase in ‘staycations’
or vacations close to home. Nature, rural tourism, and
road trips have emerged as popular travel choices due
to travel limitations and a quest for the open air. More
and more travellers want to make real connections
with local people, the place itself, and the local cul-
ture, and they are doing it by slowing down. They stay
longer in the destination and prioritize travel qual-
ity over quantity (Wen et al., 2020). Therefore, the
‘slow travel’ experience is gaining increasing interest
(unwto, 2021).
Slow tourism is perceived as a promising alterna-
tive to mass tourism which promotes sustainability,
and with which tourists, destination managers, and
tourism service providers are willing to engage (Ser-
dane et al., 2020). It respects local cultures, history, and
environments, while at the same time valuing social
responsibility by celebrating diversity and the connec-
tion that a tourist gets from sharing and engaging in
a space with other visitors and the host community
(Jung et al., 2014).
Despite the proliferation of the relevant literature,
research development on slow tourism is still in its
infancy (Serdane et al., 2020). There is no consis-
tent understanding of what constitutes slow tourism.
Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022 | 323
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
It can be considered as a kind of attitude regarding
travel (Lumsdon & McGrath, 2011) which includes
use of local transportation to and from the destina-
tion and staying at one destination for a longer time
to explore local culture and food. These travellers are
environmentally friendly. Others see it as an alterna-
tive approach to mass tourism (Markwell et al., 2012
in Serdane et al., 2020) which brings social and eco-
nomic benefits to the destination (Timms & Con-
way, 2012). Additionally, there are different mean-
ings of slow tourism worldwide. In the usa, slow
tourism means taking time at the destination to be-
come familiar with it, to explore it up close. The mode
of transport to the destination is not so important,
whereas in Europe, slow tourism refers to travelling
to closer places and with an environmentally accept-
able mode of travel (Robbins & Cho, 2012 in Özdemir
& Çelebi, 2018). Therefore, there is no universally ac-
cepted global definition of slow tourism.
The aim of this research is to advance previous re-
views on slow tourismvia amore systematic, objective,
and integrated review. The paper uses a bibliometric
analytical tool to identify established and emergent re-
search clusters for the typological analysis. Such an ap-
proachwas undertaken to address threemain research
questions:
rq1 How has research on slow tourism evolved be-
tween 2011 and 2021?
rq2 What are the main themes of slow tourism re-
search?
rq3 What are the future directions of the research in
this field?
Therefore, the aim of bibliometric analysis is to:
• Provide bibliometric information on scientific
studies which were extracted from the Scopus
database.
• Use the software R with bibliometrix codes and
the biblioshiny online program to obtain and
record the quantitative data in the different ar-
ticles selected.
• Use the variable of authors per article to under-
stand the leading authors in this research area.
• Use citations analysis and a collaboration map to
understand the network of this research stream.
• Study countries to evaluate production, citations,
and the network within each country.
According to the aim of the research, this paper is
arranged as follows. The first part explores the litera-
ture review of slow tourism, following the methodol-
ogy phases used. The third section subsequently dis-
cusses results of the bibliometric analysis via a series
of visual and tabulated representations. Based on the
research findings the authors elucidated research gaps
and set areas for future research. The paper closes with
the contribution and implications of this study.
Literature Review
The term ‘slow’ in the context of sustainability origi-
nates from the Slow Food movement which began in
Italy in the late 1980s. Carlo Petrini, who is a father of
the Slow Food movement, was against the opening of
the first McDonald’s restaurant in the centre of Rome
in 1986 (Myhrvold et al., 2011 in Paul, 2014). He be-
lieved that everybody is entitled to tasty, healthy, and
local food. Such a philosophy later spread to all as-
pects of urban living as a Cittaslow (Slow City) move-
ment which aims to increase the quality of life and en-
sure sustainable development in cities (Nilsson et al.,
2011). Today,more than 100, 000 small cities are part of
the Cittaslow network. Those cities satisfymajor crite-
ria grouped into seven macro-areas ranging from en-
ergy and environmental policies, quality-of-urban-life
policies, policies for hospitality, awareness and train-
ing, and social cohesion. People in those cities respect
tradition through the joy of slow and quiet living (Cit-
taslow International n.d.).
Slowness is an effective concept of slow tourism
which offers an alternative to mass tourism with more
attention on destination sustainability and tourist ex-
perience (Heitmann et al., 2011; Meng & Choi, 2016).
In the literature several authors have acknowledged
the need to differentiate between slow travel and slow
tourism. The term ‘slow travel’ is more about slow-
ing down the speed (Gardner, 2009 in Caffyn, 2012),
taking time to explore the destination. The journey be-
comes a moment of relaxation, not a predetermined,
imposed goal to achieve. Those travellers are seeking
greater authenticity in their holidaying and require a
different experience while having a moral conscience
324 | Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
towards the impact they bring to the destination (Con-
way & Timms, 2012). They usually use clean modes of
transport such as biking (Dickinson et al., 2011) and
walking which gives them the possibility to explore
the destination slowly and immerse themselves in it
(Molz, 2009 in Rabbiosi, 2021; Kato & Progano, 2017).
Doing so, travellers make real and meaningful con-
nections with people, places, culture, food, heritage,
and environment (Caffyn, 2012; Moskwa et al., 2015;
Park & Lee, 2019;Walker & Lee, 2019). Therefore ‘slow
travel’ generally refers to the tourist journey while
‘slow tourism’ is concerned with all tourism activi-
ties at the destination (Conway & Timms, 2012). Such
tourism focuses on the full travel experience and en-
courages travellers to reduce their travel frequency and
stay longer in a destination to immerse themselves in a
destination, its culture, and people (Dickinson, 2015 in
Losado &Mota, 2019) which is a central point for cre-
ation and consumption of memorable tourism experi-
ences (Lindberg & Østergaard, 2015). When travellers
are encouraged to physically (e.g., touching, smelling,
walking) or mentally (i.e., thinking or watching) con-
nect with a given event or performance, they can im-
merse themselves in ameaningful experience of learn-
ing and discovering it. In this sense, Lumsdon, and
McGrath (2011) point out that slow tourism creates a
chance to slowly explore a destination and enrich the
travel experience.
Themajor reasons for participating in slow tourism
are ‘self-reflection’ and ‘discovery’ (Oh et al., 2016; Lin,
2018). For instance, self-reflection assists travellers
to become reinvigorated and recharged while dis-
covery encourages travellers to get inspired, discover
themselves, immerse themselves with their destina-
tion more deeply, and restore positive attitudes and
mindsets. Time is valuable for them. Such tourism en-
courages independent rather than group travel. They
choose destinations with the aim to stay longer in
places with a slower pace, which offers opportuni-
ties to walk, cycle and enjoy the countryside (Lums-
don & McGrath, 2011; Sompong et al., 2015; Serdane
et al., 2020). They use local trains, local buses, bicy-
cle or walk to explore destinations. Moreover, such
transportation represents low carbon means of travel
(Conway&Timms, 2012; Kato & Progano, 2017; Chi &
Han, 2020). They opt to stay in accommodation with
a host family so they can immerse themselves in the
local life and learn about the local culture first-hand
(Khan, 2015;Meng&Choi, 2016; Losada&Mota, 2019;
Ince et al., 2020; Walker et al., 2021). They are looking
for a quality over quantity experience, something to-
tally different from trips where travellers just follow
the list of all must-sees and after getting home realize
that they need a holiday to recover.
Oh et al. (2016) have undertaken very interesting
research on the motivation and goals of practicing
slow tourism. In their opinion, slow tourism is not a
counterbalance to developed mass tourism, but rather
a coexisting phenomenon. Both slow and fast ways of
travelling are constantly intertwined within the same
tourist. They suggest that the tourism industry should
not consider slow tourism as an independent, sepa-
rate, and opposite phenomenon to mass tourism, but
should treat it in parallel. The focus should be on a
tourist behavioural approach – their motivation to
travel, their value and the goals they would like to
achieve during the holiday.
According to the literature review, slow tourism
research has been mainly focused on the factors that
affect the choice of slow tourism destination such as
a traveller’s sociodemographic, attitudinal and moti-
vational characteristics (Meng & Choi, 2016; Oh et
al., 2016; Lin, 2017). This study tries to define major
themes, trends, authors, and countries of slow tourism
research during the last decade.
Methodology
The methodology of this study includes five main
phases involving (1) Study Design, (2) Data Collec-
tion, (3) Data Analysis, (4) Data Visualization, and (5)
Interpretation (Cobo et al., 2011; Zupic & Čater, 2015;
Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017; Campra et al., 2021).
Study Design
The first step was to define the research aim and ques-
tions. The second step included selection of a database
to develop a data set for bibliometric analysis. The Sco-
pus database was used to search all pertinent articles
for this research because it is one of the largest and
highest-quality abstract and online citation databases
Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022 | 325
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
of peer-reviewed literature in the field of management
science in general (Aksnes & Sivertsen, 2019). The
search criteria were determined by the researchers to
extract the collection results. First, the term ‘slow’ was
combined with ‘tourism,’ and ‘travel’ and ‘sustainable’
to formulate keywords such as ‘slow tourism,’ and ‘slow
sustainable tourism,’ and ‘slow travel.’ Those keywords
were searched in three sections, including the title, ab-
stract, and keywords. In terms of document types, only
full-length journal articles in English were collected
(Ramos-Rodríguez & Ruiz-Navarro, 2004). Confer-
ence papers, reviews, and reports were excluded. The
timeline was selected (2011–2021), keeping in mind
that the concept was operationalized during the 2010s
(Walker et al., 2021). The second-round search was
conducted to refine the collection results and check
the selected articles.
Data Collection
In the first round, 743 relevant publications were iden-
tified. After applying the research criteria such as time
frame, publication type, and language, the data set
included 304 publications. The authors read the ti-
tle and the abstract of those publications displayed in
the search results. The database was then downloaded
in Bibtex format and uploaded in the Bibliometrix R
package which is an open-source tool for quantita-
tive research in bibliometrics. After the upload, the
R Studio software version 3.0 was used to eliminate
duplicates and create a unified file. After deleting all
duplicates and selecting relevant publications from the
tourism and hospitality field, the final dataset included
168 publications.
Data Analysis and Visualization
In this phase, the software R and biblioshiny web in-
terface for bibliometrix were used to create descriptive
bibliometric analysis and explore relationships within
the research, such as keywords’ co-occurrence and co-
citation networks. The results from the analysis are vi-
sually presented in the tables and graphs.
Interpretation
Finally, data has been interpreted. The analysis of the
results starts with the essential description of themain
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 1 Annual Scientific Production – ‘Slow Tourism’
bibliometrics statistics which present the following de-
tails: type of document, annual scientific production,
scientific sources, source growth, number of articles
per author, author’s keywords, articles’ citation, coun-
try’s production, country’s citation, country collabora-
tion map, and country collaboration network.
Findings
Screening of available research literature reveals that in
the field of slow tourism research, altogether, 368 au-
thors contributed 168 research publications to the lit-
erature corpus from 2011–2021. The most significant
increase in publication occurred in 2020, with a total
of 35 articles (21) while the lowest productivity was
in 2012 (3) (Figure 1).
Those articles have been published in 71 sources,
particularly in scientific journals. The number of ‘Key-
words Plus’ is 320 and represent words or phrases
that frequently appear in the titles of an article’s ref-
erences, but do not appear in the title of the article
itself. Out of these 168 research publications, single-
authored documents constitute about 23, while the
remaining 77 of the articles weremulti-authored, in-
dicating the popularity of the collaborative nature of
research among authors in the field of slow tourism.
Therefore, the collaboration index (ci), which is de-
signed as Total Authors of Multi-Authored Articles, is
2.56 authors per document. Table 1 presents a detailed
characterization of the database.
Regarding the journals’ productivity, the analysis is
based on a ranking of the top ten journals in the econ-
omy and business management field from the Scopus
326 | Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
Table 1 Initial Search Results on ‘Slow Tourism’ Topic for
the Period 2011–2021
Main information about data Search Result (Number)*
Documents (articles) 
Sources (journals) 
Period –
Average citations per documents .
Keywords Plus (id) 
Author’s Keywords (de) 
Authors 
Authors of single-authored documents 
Authors of multi-authored documents 
Collaboration Index (ci) .
Notes *Search results (number) are from the Scopus
database.
Table 2 Top 10 Journals on ‘Slow Tourism’ Topic in the
Scopus Database from 2011–2021
Sources Articles
Journal of Sustainable Tourism 
Tourism Geographies 
African Journal of Hospitality Tourism and Leisure 
Tourism Management 
Tourism Recreation Research 
Tourism Management Perspectives 
Tourism Planning and Development 
Current Issues in Tourism 
Journal of Destination Marketing and Management 
database. From Table 2 it is evident that one journal
stands out in terms of the number of articles: Journal
of Sustainable Tourism with 27 articles, with Tourism
Geographies following with 10 articles and others be-
low that number. Furthermore, the table makes visible
the fact that all journals deal with either tourism or
hospitality services.
The most prominently cited publication on slow
tourism is ‘Developing a Conceptual Framework for
Slow Travel: A Grounded Theory Approach’ authored
by Lumsdon and McGrath and published in 2011.
In their framework they identify four key features
Table 3 The Top 10 Most-Cited Papers in the Journals
between 2011 and 2021
Authors, Year Journal Total Citations*
Lumsdon and McGrath
()
Journal of Sustainable
Tourism

Nilsson et al. () Current Issues in Tourism 
Ekinci () Tourism Management 
Timms and Conway
()
Tourism Geographies 
Moskwa et al. () Journal of Sustainable
Tourism

Ho et al. Chen () Journal of Sustainable
Tourism

Adeyinka-Ojo & Khoo-
Lattimore ()
Worldwide Hospitality
and Tourism Themes

Lin () Journal of Sustainable
Tourism

Presenza et al. () Tourism Planning and
Development

Kato and Progano () Tourism Management
Perspectives

Notes *Number of citations is based on Scopus database.
that together make up the core components of a slow
travel holiday: slowness and the value of time; local-
ity and activities at the destination; mode of trans-
port and travel experience; environmental conscious-
ness, with slowness having a pivotal role. Their con-
cept of slow tourism has received a total of 109 ci-
tations. The following most-cited study is ‘CittàSlow
Eco-gastronomic Heritage as a Tool for Destination
Development’ with 33 citations, published in Current
Issues inTourism (Nilsson et al., 2011). The authors em-
phasized that slow tourism could assist destinations in
quality offerings and that the CittàSlow concept has
an indirect potential for tourism development. Ad-
ditionally, Timms and Conway (2012), with 28 cita-
tions, point out that slow tourism is an alternative
model to mass tourism since it encompasses the envi-
ronmental sustainability concerns of ecotourism, ad-
dresses the social and cultural sustainability interests
of community-based tourism and advances the eco-
nomic sustainability of a destination. Table 3 presents
Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022 | 327
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
Figure 2 World-Cloud Analysis of Research Literature
the top ten most-cited influential publications in the
journals from the Scopus database.
According to the analysis from biblioshiny, the
main keywords that are used frequently in the field
of slow tourism research are ‘sustainability,’ ‘tourism’
and ‘slow travel,’ following ‘slow food,’ ‘tourist expe-
rience’ and ‘slow adventure.’ This information is es-
sential to determine the research trends and fields
in slow tourism that can be interesting as research
areas. To confirm this, a world cloud analysis was
adopted (Figure 2). Such analysis visually represents
text data, where the size of a particular word can visu-
alize the frequency and its assigned importance by the
researchers. The larger the size of a word in the word
cloud the greater the number of times that word is
used in the corpus. Analysis of the text confirms that
‘slow travel’ is usually used with ‘sustainability’ and
‘tourist experience.’ Moreover, the analysis indicates
that ‘tourism development ’and ‘slow food’ are more
popular than the word ‘Covid-19.’
Furthermore, ‘slow tourism,’ ‘slow travel’ and ‘slow
food’ were central keywords in 2011 while the key-
words ‘sustainability’ and ‘alternative tourism’ have
evolved since 2015, which indicates their linkage. The
development trend of keywords from 2011 to 2021 is
visualized on the map (Table 4).
To present how frequently these keywords words
have been used together in the literature, a co-occur-
rence analysis of keywords is made. The larger the
size of the specific frame the greater the repetition
of that keyword in the literature. Figure 3 shows the
Table 4 Development Trend of Keywords between 2011
and 2021
Year Sl
ow
to
ur
ism
Su
st
ai
na
bl
et
ou
ri
sm
Sl
ow
fo
od
Su
st
ai
na
bi
lit
y
Sl
ow
tr
av
el
Su
st
ai
na
bl
ed
ev
.
To
ur
ism
A
lte
rn
at
iv
e
to
ur
is
m
C
ar
ib
be
an
Sl
ow
m
ov
em
en
t
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
result of the co-occurrence analysis of keywords. A
close look at the co-occurrencemap suggests that ‘slow
tourism,’ ‘sustainable tourism,’ and ‘slow food,’ ‘travel
experience,’ and ‘slowness’ are some of the keywords
of slow tourism literature which have been used most
frequently. The distance between two terms is an indi-
cation of how commonly they have been used together
in a journal article. It can be observed that closely sit-
uated terms have been usedmore regularly in a higher
number of research articles than two words which are
located relatively farther on the map. ‘Tourism mar-
keting’ is linked to ‘sustainable tourism’ and ‘small is-
land.’ The research findings also indicate that ‘travel
experience’ and ‘slowness’ are placed side by side, sug-
gesting that they are more frequently used in research
papers. On the other hand, ‘travel experience’ and ‘al-
ternative tourism’ are located at a relatively greater
distance on the map, which suggests that these words
have appeared in a research paper less frequently. The
appearance of the word ‘the Caribbean’ is suggestive
of the frequency of location of slow tourism research.
To detect relationships between articles, the au-
thors used co-citation network analysis. This type
328 | Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
Figure 3 Co-Occurrence of Keywords along with ‘Slow
Tourism’
of analysis studies the frequency of cases when two
(or more) sources have been cited in the third paper,
which has a similar timeline of publications. The size
of the frame of a node indicates the volume of research
work on slow tourism published by that author. Rel-
ative distance in the map is an indication of the fre-
quency with which a third common paper has cited
these two authors (or journals), so two closely situ-
ated authors (or periodicals) have been co-cited more
often.
The analysis of this study clusteredmain topics and
their authors in two different colours (red and blue).
The first cluster, the red one, emphasizes topics writ-
ten by Dickinson et al. (2011), Lumsdon, andMcGrath
(2011), and Fullagar et al. (2012). These authors are
focused on similar themes; therefore they are cited to-
gethermore frequently (Figure 4). Those topics are re-
lated to slowness, holiday duration, nearby locations,
quality tourism experience and conscious decision-
making. Slowness means spending more time at the
destination and gaining a quality tourism experience.
Special attention is given to people and place engage-
ment. They describe those travellers as environmen-
tally conscious tourists who prefer buses, coaches, and
trains as low carbon dioxide vehicles while travelling.
In their research they cited earlier research written by
Matos (2004) who pointed out that mountain regions
should develop slow tourism and offer a wider range
of tourist products to protect the natural environment.
The second cluster of this study is the blue one and
represents the concept of Slow Food and Slow City
movement described by Hall (2012) and Nilsson et
Figure 4 Co-Citation Network Analysis
Table 5 Distribution of Research Regions
Region f Region f
uk  Germany 
China  Poland 
Australia  Romania 
Italy  Thailand 
Turkey  usa 
Portugal  Malaysia 
South korea  Spain 
Japan  Sweden 
al. (2011) who co-cited Mayer and Knox from 2006.
Those authors recommend the concept of Slow Cities
(Cittaslow) as a perfect model for local sustainable
development in small towns. Such places are devel-
oped within the framework of a sustainable economic
model, provide solutions to infrastructure, pollution,
and traffic problems, mobilize the local dynamics of
the city, and offer visitors the unique historical con-
text of a town. Furthermore, those places provide an
opportunity to each visitor to enjoy local culture, food,
and hospitality.
The following section analyses the geographical
development of publishing about the ‘slow tourism’
topic. The bibliometric analysis indicates that the uk
Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022 | 329
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
Figure 5 Collaboration of Countries/Regions
(74) and China (41) are some of the highest-contribut-
ing countries in slow tourism literature as the high-
est number of research articles originate from these
countries (Table 5). Furthermore, the map (Figure 5)
shows that intercountry collaboration exists and the
blue colour on the map represents the existence of re-
search networks with other nations. What can be no-
ticed from the map is that the countries with a major
number of publications on slow tourism are the ones
with higher partnership rates, meaning that they have
shared information and helped each other to find sci-
entific, relevant results. The highest intercountry col-
laboration exists between China and Australia.
Discussion and Conclusion
This research is the first of its kind to use a biblio-
metric method to analyse research trends on slow
tourism topics from the Scopus database. The main
contribution of this paper is threefold: to present re-
search trends on slow tourism during the last decade,
to identify the most productive journals and most
cited authors and, moreover, to emphasize major key
words and themes which are currently evolving on
slow tourism research. Those themes can be used as a
potential area for future research.
According to the analysis of annual scientific pro-
duction on slow tourism research during the last de-
cade, it is evident that the highest number of publi-
cations occurred during the covid-19 pandemic pe-
riod, 2020 – 2021 (Figure 1). Slow tourism is described
as a promising alternative to mass tourism which pro-
motes sustainability, while tourists, destination man-
agers, and tourism service providers are willing to en-
gage with it (Serdane et al., 2020). Such tourism re-
spects local cultures, history, and environments, while
at the same time valuing social responsibility by cel-
ebrating diversity and the connection that a tourist
gets from sharing and engaging in a space with other
visitors and the host community (Jung et al., 2014).
In this sense, the most-cited paper written by Lums-
don and McGrath (2011) points that slow tourism is
a way in which tourists approach their travel. Those
travellers want to enjoy and slowly explore a destina-
tion. They want to interact with local people and be
part of their daily tasks. Moreover, they wish to taste
their food and enjoy the local atmosphere in a typ-
ical restaurant. Time, as a slowness, is important for
them since they can immerse themselves in different
social and cultural aspects of the local lifestyle (Sun &
Lin, 2018) which leads to a more fulfilling and mem-
orable holiday (Almeida-Santana & Moreno-Gil, 2018
in Walker et al. 2021).
Furthermore, the research reveals thatmain themes
of slow tourism are related to slow travel and food,
sustainability, and the travel experience. Slow tourism
activities, such as food experience (local and tradi-
tional diet) or slow-mode experience (public trans-
port, walking or cycling) provides a more detailed
and in-depth experience. In such ways, tourists have
a chance to immerse themselves in a destination and
330 | Academica Turistica, Year 15, No. 3, December 2022
Damir Kreši and Matina Gjuraši Slow Tourism as an Immersive Travel Experience
achieve an authentic experience. These results are im-
portant for destination managers, policymakers, and
other significant stakeholders to design strategies that
would create immersive travel experiences andmake a
positive impact on a destination.Moreover, analysis of
co-occurrence of keywords points out that travel expe-
rience and tourism marketing are very thinly studied
and therefore need the attention of researchers and
practitioners to further explore it.
The analysis finds that the journals most involved
in the research area are Journal of Sustainable Tourism,
Tourism Geographies, African Journal of Hospitality
Tourism and Leisure, Current Issues in Tourism, and
Tourism Management. These journals have the high-
est number of articles related to slow tourism research.
In addition, the Journal of Sustainable Tourism is the
journal which has the article with the most-cited pa-
per, the one written by Lumsdon and McGrath (2011).
Regarding the geographical development of slow
tourism research, most of the articles originate from
the uk, China, and Australia, and there is a country
collaboration between China and Australia. In Eu-
rope, Italy and Portugal have the highest number of
research papers on the slow tourism topic, while the
Third World countries lack in the number of research
papers. Future research should explore the concept
of slow tourism in South America, India, and New
Zealand and compare it with the European concept.
This research paper has several limitations. First,
this study attempted to provide a holistic view of slow
tourism research between 2011 and 2021; however, re-
search on slow tourism in hospitality and tourism
started in the early 2000s (Lumsdon&McGrath, 2011).
Thus, future research may compare the contribution
of regions and researchers over longitudinal studies;
one from 2000–2010 and the second from 2011–2021.
Second, the current research is limited to the Scopus
database and reviewed only articles in journals in En-
glish. Therefore, other databases may be included in
future research such as Emerald, ScienceDirect, eb-
scohost, and ProQuest as well as publications from
major conferences, books, book chapters, and disser-
tations to explore slow tourism and the link to sustain-
ability and a tourism immersive experience. Notewor-
thy is that a qualitative and mixed research method-
ology should contribute to the advancement of slow
tourism research, especially in the ThirdWorld coun-
tries where there is a lack of such studies. Such re-
search would provide guidelines for development of a
slow and sustainable tourism model in their destina-
tions. Third, while researchers usually cite their own
work to inform readers about their prior work, the
self-citations may affect the quality of the reported re-
sults in citation analysis. Hence, this creates an oppor-
tunity for future research to analyse self-citations as a
metric to evaluate the impact of leading researchers in
the field.
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