The State of Tourism Futures Research: An Asian Pacific Ontological Perspective

The Asia Pacific region is the focus for the future of world tourism and thus the future catalyst for tourism research as the process of internationalization shapes academic knowledge and creation. This special issue of the Journal of Travel Research came about due to the formation of the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Asia Pacific Chapter, in which the guest editors pondered on the present state of tourism futures writing in the region. This Special Issue uses an ontological classification to view how researchers see the future of tourism. The classification is based on two dimensions: truth claim (or not) and explanatory claim (or not). Thus, four entities are formed: prediction, prognosis, science fiction, and utopia/dystopia. Seventy percent of articles published are based upon an entity of prognosis or prediction in which authors claim truthfulness, whereas a minority of the articles are classified as science fiction.