Examination of Iranian Tourism Studies on the Subject and Methodological Dimension and the Future Drawing of Research Papers

One of the needs of any field of study is to identify existing trends and to examine the theoretical gap between previous studies in order to identify future studies of each field. Study on tourism is also no exception. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to investigate the research done in the field of tourism from thematic and methodological aspects, to identify the existing fissures and identify the direction of future research in the field of tourism. The main approach of the present study is qualitative and based on documentary studies and its statistical community, all articles of scientific and research published from 2012-2017 were tourism research journals (373 articles). The results showed that from among all types of tourism based on destination, urban tourism; from all kinds of tourism based on the type (nature) of activity; natural tourism; and from all types of tourism based on the subject, cultural and artistic tourism (heritage tourism) Most studies have been devoted to it. Also, methodologically, quantitative, applied studies, data from the questionnaire, a study between the domestic tourists most studies have been devoted to itself. Based on the results of the research, It is suggested that tourism journals, with the allocation of numbers for specific topics, aim to bridge the gap in the domestic tourism studies.