Bibliometric analysis of publications on wellness tourism

Wellness tourism is emerging as one of the most preferred tourism segments for both travel enthusiasts and ordinary vacation seekers due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant stress and anxiety. It is a niche tourism segment with enormous ability to emerge as the most in demand for coming years. This study carries out a bibliometric analysis to identify the prominent journals, their characteristics and total citations, trending keywords, emerging topics etc, in wellness tourism. With 159 articles extracted from the Web of Science database, it was observed that the word ‘health’ was often used, and that ‘medical tourism’ was the most popular topic. China takes the lead among world nations for having conducted most research in this field. The findings of the study could be beneficial to the research community, academia, the tourism industry and policymakers. The publication acknowledges its limitations but gives the implications for further research.