Analysis and Trends of Global Research on Nautical, Maritime and Marine Tourism

Tourism related to the sea and boating activities is becoming increasingly popular and revolves around a range of leisure, water sports, nautical or other maritime activities. This article studies the main scientific contributions in this area, bearing in mind the complexity of finding a suitable definition of this concept. Hence, the aim of this paper is to analyze the scientific production from 1986 to 2020 in impact journals of the terms nautical tourism, maritime tourism and marine tourism considering the following variables: number of documents, number of articles, period being studied, Hirsch citations and index. The results show an increasing trend in terms of both the number of published articles and citations publications from 2007 onwards and the review of the literature raises the need to define a new concept: blue tourism. Future trends in research include terms such as tourist ports, quality of websites and blue economy.

Automated summary

Tourism related to the sea and boating activities, including leisure, water sports, nautical and maritime activities, is increasingly popular. Research shows a rising trend in scientific production and citations since 2007, prompting the need for a new concept of "blue tourism."