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Digital trust and rapport have become essential for maintaining profitable customer relationships and ensuring long-term survival in the tourism industry. A bibliometric analysis of literature published between 2014 and 2023 reveals an expanding body of research driven by rising competitive pressure, elevated customer expectations, technology adoption, and disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis indicates that the United States is the most productive country in this domain. Key research themes highlighted across leading hospitality journals include customer engagement, employee conduct, and the deployment of technology to establish trust. Additionally, establishing digital trust with international customers relies heavily on practical factors such as cultural sensitivity, technology incorporation, and service accessibility. Future academic inquiry points towards investigating cultural influences, technological developments, crisis effects, and alternative analytical methods.
In an increasingly online travel marketplace, businesses must secure the confidence of global travellers. This overview maps a decade of scholarly insights, highlighting how technology and workforce behaviour intersect to create trust. Understanding these trends helps tourism operators identify the operational and cultural adjustments needed to establish rapport, satisfy elevated customer expectations, and remain competitive during market disruptions.
The findings can inform service delivery strategies and digital customer experience designs for international tourism operators and hospitality platforms. Practitioners can apply insights surrounding cultural sensitivity, accessible services, and technology adoption to improve customer retention. However, as this work is an analytical review of published academic literature rather than a tested product or prototype, it represents early-stage conceptual guidance rather than a market-ready tool.
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In the rapidly changing environment of the tourism business, building digital trust and rapport has appeared as a critical factor for sustaining profitable customer relationships and confirming long-term business survival. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the research landscape with respect to digital trust and rapport establishment within the tourism context using techniques for bibliometric analysis in conjunction with visualization. This research paper explores publication trends, identifies key journals and authors, and determines the most productive countries, academic institutions, and primary research keywords. It involves analyzing publications from the Scopus database focusing on the duration between 2014 and 2023. The findings show that the digital trust and rapport-building literature expands its importance within the tourism industry due to factors such as competition pressure; customers’ high expectations; the incorporation of technology; and, most recently, the occurrence of pandemics like the COVID-19 pandemic. The US, in particular, can be identified as the most productive country in this research area. The International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management and the International Journal of Hospitality Management appear to be popular scientific publications on this topic. They present the following main research themes: customer engagement, employee conduct, and technology in the construction of trust. This study also underscores the practical role of the findings in successful endeavors within the field, detailing how cultural sensitivity, technological incorporation, and accessibility in service provision would contribute to building digital trust with international customers. Potential future research directions are proposed to advance the understanding of culture, technology, the effects of crises, and the application of other research methods.
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DOI: 10.3390/info15100598
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