A review of authenticity research in tourism: Launching the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on authenticity

Authenticity is one of the oldest and most debated concepts in tourism studies. The last major review of authenticity was published in 1999 in this journal. This review aims to contextualize the developments since that review within the broader trends of 42 years of authenticity research (1979–2020). Working with a sample of 458 research articles, multiple methods of systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis (including descriptive statistics, thematic analysis, and keyword co-frequency analysis) are applied. From the findings produced, a number of challenges and opportunities are identified that speak to the viability of future authenticity research in the field. More broadly, this review also serves to launch the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on authenticity.