Analysing relationships in tourism: A review

In recent decades, a systemic notion of tourism has been gaining ground, leading to its recognition as a set of interacting elements. From this perspective, relationships have become an important factor in research for understanding tourism, proving useful in the planning and management of tourism destinations. By means of an comprehensive review of the main contributions in the scientific literature in this regard, this paper highlights that there is no one single conception or theoretical-methodological approach to studying relationships, and proposes a classification of the literature on the basis of six major research lines, with a view to identifying and analysing the main advances and gaps presented by each of the research lines. In short, the article identifies the main lines of research developed in this field, analysing the main contributions and making a series of proposals to guide the future research agenda regarding the analysis of relationships in tourism. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.