Complete Guide: Tourism Research Paper Writing with Ease

A research paper is a type of academic writing that is usually grounded on unique research done by a student as a young researcher. Need to do research on tourism? You can conduct research on a particular tourism topic and present it along with the precise analysis and personal interpretation of the obtained material and findings. A tourism research paper may be completed as an ordinary term paper or become a sufficient ground for well-developed master’s thesis or even a doctoral dissertation.

In fact, it is essential for any researcher to perceive the intended meaning of how to write a research paper properly. That’s exactly this tourism research paper writing guide pursues – to give some useful tourism research paper writing tips while dealing with research paper writing.

What Is Required of You to Write a Tourism Research Paper

A tourism research paper is a literary work that requires you to perform an in-depth analysis from a particular perspective. Based on this definition, you are supposed to create a strong base for arguing on the tourism topic. The field of tourism usually offers a significant number of topics to be examined. That is why you should apply the critical and analytical skills while writing tourism research papers. Besides, you should know how to collect all the relevant information on tourism, develop the topic, and transmit the main idea about the findings to the audience as required. For that reason, take into account different considerations on the tourism topic and conduct extensive research based only on reliable sources of information. Now you should determine if it will be an investigation of a defined tourism area, examination of social, environmental and infrastructure effects of different tourist attractions, or designing, conducting, and evaluating visitor surveys.

Choosing a Topic on Tourism Isn’t a Fight Anymore: 5 Useful Tips from Our Writers

The first and the most important element of writing a tourism research paper is choosing a relevant topic. It can be interesting and challenging to provide the audience with newly discovered information. Besides, it can present a different point of view on a well-known issue in the tourism sector. This element of a research paper is considered to be decisive as it usually determines the number of your personal efforts and the enthusiasm for discovering a particular topic. Concentrate on some underexplored aspects of tourism to develop them into narrow and well-constructed research papers. Among a great variety of topics on tourism, it is necessary to choose the topic you can manage to write on without any additional difficulties such as “There is no information on this issue”, “There is too much information to include in 5-page research paper” and so on. You can take several captivating topics not to face such problems mentioned earlier:

• Competitiveness in the Tourism Sector in the United States of America;
• The Functional Performance of International Tour Operators on Recommendations for Travel Destinations;
• An Impact of Social Media on Destination Preferences of American Residents;
• Local Authorities and Their Influence on the Tourism Business in the Less Attractive Tourist Places;
• Overseas Promotional Activities of the National Tourism;
• International Tourist Arrivals: Is the Growth Expected?
• Top Components of the Hospitality Industry in Europe and the USA.

You should find the topic you want to explore most. While choosing a topic, it is crucial to avoid topics that are too technical, large and sophisticated or studied by other researchers many times. This way, you can be incapable of dealing with a great amount of information at the original approach to the issue. As a result, you risk losing all the enthusiasm to discover the topic from the very beginning.

Follow 5 tourism research paper writing prompts that are helpful while choosing the topic for your tourism research paper:

1. Brainstorm the ideas by asking only one but efficient and thought-provoking question: “What is interesting for me, and what do I want to know?” It is a great approach that helps to define the topic that is most appropriate for you.
2. Take a review of the course notes and readings. It happens that looking through these materials, it is possible for you to think of some interesting idea.
3. Create a list of keywords. This tip allows finding broad and narrow related terms and key concepts that are usually decisive and help to choose a topic in a short time.
4. Define a topic of the research as a focused question of the research. For example, if the research question is “How does the local government attract new tourists?,” the focused research question will be “What are the main approaches the local government implements to attract new tourists?”
5. Develop a topic from the thesis statement formulated in advance. In fact, it can contain the answer to the developed research question. For example, you know how to deal with social media to develop the tourism business in your city. Develop this research question in your paper on tourism.

3 Pre-Writing Tips That Help Write a Research Paper

1. How to Search for Relevant Information

To collect the necessary amount of information, you need to check out related databases, read some general information about the chosen country, which includes its population, GDP, the most interesting places to visit, and the number of visitors per year. It is also essential to surf the net searching for peer-reviewed articles. In addition, it is essential to go to the library and find several books that contain detailed information about the tourism in a particular country, describe economic advantages from tourism, and examine its influence on the social, political, and economic development of the chosen territory. It will be better if these books are published recently and operate up-to-date information.

While searching for the information in the global network, it is crucial for you to pay attention to the extensions of the domain names. It is advisable to use only those, which are .edu that means an educational institution, .gov (the information is provided by the government), and .org (the data is provided by a non-profit organization). Because these sites tend to publish only reliable information, you should be careful and not use politically biased data. In this way, the most useful resources are Google Scholar, International Public Library, and the Wall Street Executive Library.

While visiting the library, you should pay attention to catalogs related to tourism and modern dictionaries that help to find out some definitions. It is also helpful to look through recently published magazines and newspapers that usually contain well-developed topics about different tourist attractions from all around the globe. In addition, it is possible to search for information about the main components of the tourism industry like various travel agents, tour operators, lodging and catering, transport, and guiding. While looking through all the information, you should bookmark the most interesting sites and take notes about the authors of the articles and books, their titles, and dates of publication for creating a reference list.

2. How to Create a Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is the primary idea of the paper that allows the reader to understand its key point. For that reason, the arguments you provide in the tourism research paper should be grounded on this main idea and well-developed. Besides, the thesis statement should be one well-constructed sentence that will set a tone for the whole paper. For example: “At least 30% of the local budget of Manila should be spent on reconstruction of numerous historical buildings, monuments, and parks that are situated on the territory of this large city as they attract millions of tourists every year.” Thus, the thesis statement is a presentation of your ideas and explain them to the readers, answering the major questions of the literary work.

3. How to Make an Outline

The tourism research paper usually includes:

• A title page;
• An abstract (if necessary);
• Introduction;
• Three or more body paragraphs;
• Used materials;
• Implemented methods of the research;
• Obtained results;
• Conclusion;
• Reference page.

Besides, it may contain different appendices, tables, and pictures. It is logical to develop the same outline but it may be not so detailed. It helps you organize all the research ideas and subdivide them into the suitable subpoints. In this way, all the information appears to be strictly organized and grouped in a clear and logical way:

• The introduction contains a thesis statement and purpose of research paper writing;
• The main parts discuss the arguments of the author that support the thesis statement;
• The conclusion restates the thesis statement and summarises all the discussed arguments.

Let’s focus on each part in detail. What comes first when your research paper is taken to read? Right, its title that should say a lot about your research paper. The title of your tourism research paper should be short and clear, introducing the main subject of the author to the audience. For example “The Influence of Tourism on the Welfare of the Indonesians.” Usually, it is indicated on at the title page along with the group number, name of the student, and a date of submission.

The introduction is the start of paper writing, which should contain a thesis statement. In this part, you should provide all the necessary information for the readers to understand the main purpose of the paper as well as your arguments. It is important for you to grasp the attention of the audience from the very first lines and get the readers involved in the reading and thinking process. Besides, it is necessary to convince the readers that the research question is important and worth their attention. Besides, it is essential for you to provide a short summary of the paper and prepare the audience for the body paragraphs.

The body paragraphs present another crucial part of the paper. There should be three or more large and well-developed paragraphs that include supporting information for the thesis statement. Thus, each supporting claim should be presented in a separate paragraph. The body paragraphs should contain transition words in order to connect the provided information and support each other stylistically. What is more, it is advisable for you to use citations with facts and figures to convince the readers that your claim is valuable. Finally, you have to present a personal evaluation of every supporting claim, making a strong emphasis on the importance of your independent conclusions.

The conclusion is the final part of a research paper. It is the part that mentions all the important claims discussed in the body paragraphs and contains the restatement of the thesis statement from the introduction part. This section should be comparatively short, leading the readers to make a logical conclusion about the information discussed in the research paper, evaluate your findings, and agree or disagree with your main claim.

3 Post-Writing Tips Improve Your Research Paper on Tourism

Take a sigh of relief because you are in the finishing straight. Several revising steps are left to improve the quality of the research paper. Almost no experienced writer can write a brilliant paper at first attempt. Usually, several drafts are used to reach the final results in research paper writing.

1. The first and most important proofreading tip is to read the paper and check the overall content. Thus, each body paragraph should start with a topic sentence, all the arguments should be supported with reliable information, and all the sentences should be logically finished. What is more, the paper should not contain irrelevant, repetitious phrases or some unnecessary words and word combinations, and the sentences should not be too long or too short. Reading the paper for the second time is a great way to check for possible content errors, quotations, and misspellings. Besides, it is necessary to double check all the mentioned facts and presented figures as only one mistake in statistics or coordinates may lead to wrong results, and devalue all your research efforts. In addition, you should avoid contractions. It is also crucial for the academic writing to omit using the third person and avoid such phrases as “I want,” “I think,” “I presume,” and so on.
2. The second tip is related to following the structure of the paper. Thus, it is important for you to arrange the paper in a particular format, would it be APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, or any other style. The margins should be appropriate, and the reference list should be arranged according to the standard norms. In all the formats, there is a need to mention the name of the author, year of publishing, the title of the article, and the number of used pages. If it is a digital source, it should include a link to the used material and the date of the access.
3. The final tip is to check the paper for plagiarism by using a number of popular resources that can be easily found on the internet. If the paper contains citations of some other literary works, ideas, or claims of other authors, it should also contain in-text citations. Every in-text citation should be arranged according to the chosen paper format and contain the name of the author and the year of publishing. Therefore, if all the mentioned material is properly cited, there is no chance for your tourism research paper to be defined as plagiarism.

Following all the provided tips on how to write a tourism research paper will allow you to create an original and well-constructed literary work. In addition, the mentioned tips will prevent you from such unpleasant things as revisions and plagiarism. In this way, the final paper is predicted to be great, and the readers will obtain pleasure from reading it.