GEOHERITAGE AND TOURISM – OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH

Purpose – Contemporary tourism in many developed destinations relies on natural resources, many of which can be directly valorised as tourist attractions. Within natural resources, geoheritage (geological heritage) consists sites or areas of geological features with significant scientific, educational, cultural or aesthetic value. Despite its multiple values, the attractive geosites and their valorisation in tourism are still insufficiently covered. Methodology – This paper, aims to present the state of the art in a form of a research overview of geoheritage valorisation in tourism by analysing the WoSCC database. The results of overviewing 171 scientific papers on keywords geoheritage and tourism are presented and interpreted in the form of qualitative and quantitative analysis, maps, tabular and graphical representations. To identify the main research links and streams between geoheritage and tourism the bibliometric analysis is carried out using VOSviewer software. Findings – The papers are classified and it is revealed an insufficient representation of research in the field of tourist valorisation of geoheritage. It is also notable the spatial inhomogeneity towards interest in geoheritage research. Contribution – The paper brings a research agenda for covering gaps in the further scientific research of the field. The research also points out some possible streams and framework for future geoheritage research that offers new opportunities for the growth of tourism as a responsible and sustainable industry.