Twenty Years of <i>Tourism Planning and Development</i> : Looking Back to Look Forward

Tourism Planning and Development (TPD) is a leading journal in the fields of 'Development', 'Business and International Management' and 'Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management'. In 2023, TPD obtained its first journal impact factor (JIF) of 2.4 and also celebrated its 20 th year of publishing. These milestones afford a good time to celebrate and reflect on the past as a basis for envisioning the future. The aim of this paper is to provide a lifetime overview of the academic contents of the journal since the first issue was published in 2004. This study used the R-tool of bibliometrix to run a comprehensive science mapping analysis of 598 articles published in TPD in the past 20 years. Results show that articles published in TPD centre around four topic clusters: destination development, tourism development, residents, and local community. Contributing authors come from all over the world, with UK, Australia, USA, Spain, China, and Portugal being the most contributing countries. The study shows that TPD has a clear position as a reputable academic research journal, attracting submissions from authors around the world and is set to continue to play a significant role in the research community to advance knowledge in tourism planning and development.