Loyalty trends and issues in tourism research

Purpose – Loyalty, a behavioural pattern of guests, is an unpredictable phenomenon, changeable over time, adaptable to market trends and measurable only through market research. Previous research has confirmed that loyalty is not an isolated variable described only through loyalty behaviour or loyalty attitude, but rather it is interdependent on both behaviour and attitude. However, within loyalty research there are many open questions, which need to be addressed by researchers in the field of tourism and hospitality. Thus, this paper provides a unique perspective on previous research, including loyalty taxonomy, loyalty constructs, and directly and indirectly connected variables to loyalty in research models. Design – Upon content analysis and refinement, four clusters are determined and explained in the paper: (1) destination loyalty; (2) hotel (brand) loyalty; (3) loyalty programme; (4) event (festival) loyalty. Methodology – For the purpose of this paper, the authors applied content analysis. Based on a keyword search on the Web of Science platform (database Web of Science Core Collection), 112 articles published in leading tourism and hospitality business journals were identified as relevant for the study. Findings – The study contributes to a better understanding of tourist loyalty research by identifying shortcomings of previous research. Among the most common shortcomings are selective research focus and uninventive research methodology. Therefore, the current study suggests multi-level loyalty model development as a more innovative framework for future research. Originality of the research – Since this study brings an overview of the four most commonly researched topics in tourism loyalty research, the results will be beneficial for scientists who study the broader aspects of the loyalty construct