Exploring the Conceptual Structure and Discursive Dynamics of Urban Tourism in the Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Era: A Bibliometric Analysis with Semantic Clustering (2020–2025)

Mahdnejad, Hafez

doi:10.22072/tmsse.2026.2085790.1139

Exploring the Conceptual Structure and Discursive Dynamics of Urban Tourism in the Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Era: A Bibliometric Analysis with Semantic Clustering (2020–2025)

Document Type : Original Article- original research

Author

Hafez Mahdnejad

Department Associate Professor of Geography, Faculty of Humanities, Sayyed Jamaleddin Asadabadi University, Asadabad, Iran.

10.22072/tmsse.2026.2085790.1139

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has structurally challenged urban tourism, necessitating rethinking of planning and management paradigms. This bibliometric study analyzes the conceptual structure and emerging trends in post-COVID-19 urban tourism scholarship. Using keyword co-occurrence network analysis in VOSviewer, 136 Scopus-indexed sources (2020–2025) were examined. Findings reveal knowledge organized around three central nodes—"COVID-19," "tourism," and "post-COVID"—forming eleven conceptual clusters: urban health, sustainable-smart tourism, multi-level governance, peripheral resilience, behavioral dynamics, digital technologies, touristification, digital marketing, spatial analytics, heritage-ecosystem services, and multi-layered crises. Temporal analysis indicates a paradigmatic shift from "reactive crisis management" (2020–2022) to "sustainable transformative reconstruction" (2023–2025). Five structural gaps were identified: geographical bias toward Europe/China, marginalization of human-behavioral dimensions, neglect of climate-health interlinkages, implementation gaps in developing cities, and platform bias in digital marketing. The study concludes that sustainability is redefined as a cross-cutting framework intersecting tourism management, urban planning, and public health. This research provides a foundation for developing localized "resilient urban tourism" frameworks for Global South cities.

Keywords

Urban Tourism

Post-COVID-19

Bibliometrics

Co-word Network Analysis

Sustainability

Resilience

Subjects