Digital cultural tourism: progress and a proposed framework for future research

ABSTRACT While digitalization is a critical topic in cultural tourism research, the concept of digital cultural tourism requires greater clarity and coherence. This review paper systematically analyzes the intellectual structure of digital cultural tourism research via multidisciplinary lenses. Two hundred and eleven related academic articles from 1996 to 2021 were retrieved and analyzed using a bibliometric visualization approach. Five research themes were identified, including changing the discourses of cultural tourism, historical site reconstruction, travel route information, smartphone-medicated cultural tourism, and virtual cultural tourism. The study further analyzed the research progress and proposed a future research agenda.