Purpose – This paper aims to outline a map of all the research that exists on mobile technology and tourism
archived in the two main databases worldwide (Web of Science and Scopus). Accordingly, with the
identification of all the scientific articles that deal with both mobile technology and tourism, the authors seek
to ascertain the evolution of mobile technology in the tourism sector through the years, countries, universities
and authors and determine the various collaborations brought about between authors, universities,
institutions and/or companies in various research projects. Finally, it also allows the authors to distinguish
the main topics under study within the scope of ‘mobile tourism’.
Design/methodology/approach – A mixed methodology has been carried out. The search focused on
the principal databases of bibliographic references and citations of periodical publications, such as articles
from scientific journals, books and other types of printed material. Once the results were obtained in the
respective databases, it was necessary to be able to work with them. In this respect, the authors had to extract
the relevant data and dump it in a bibliographic reference manager, for which they chose Mendeley. After
this, the tabulation of data was performed in Excel and tables and graphs were created from all the data
collected.
Findings – The main results obtained and analyzed are the number of articles per year, countries and
universities. In the same way, it is interesting to highlight the number of countries and universities that
participate in each article under study. On the other hand, an analysis has been carried out regarding the
number of articles per author, as well as the topics dealt with in the different articles.
Originality/value – This analysis reveals the role that has been played by mobile phones in tourism since
the first scientific article was recorded in 2002. In this regard, in recent years there has been a significant
increase in the number of articles, finally resulting in moderate figures in relation to countries (40) and
universities (233) that have formed part of the subject matter under study. In contrast to other areas of
research in tourism, the relevance of this subject is therefore evident, as is the need for greater background
knowledge to establish research models adapted to the new reality of tourism in a world of ever-increasing
mobility