Mapping memorable tourism experience: A bibliometric analysis and future research agenda (2015-2025)

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The global tourism industry has undergone a paradigm shift in the post-pandemic era, transitioning from mass tourism toward the experience economy. Within this context, delivering Memorable Tourism Experiences (MTEs) has emerged as a critical antecedent for achieving profound tourist satisfaction and sustainable destination competitiveness. This study maps the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and future research trajectories of MTE literature from 2015 to 2025. Employing a quantitative bibliometric approach, a dataset of 299 peer-reviewed documents was retrieved from the Scopus database. Performance metrics were analyzed using Biblioshiny, while science mapping was conducted via VOSviewer. The findings reveal a remarkable annual growth rate of 42.49%, underscoring a rapid global expansion in this domain. Current Issues in Tourism leads the publication output, with Asian and Australasian institutions dominating the research landscape. Co-occurrence analysis identified five primary thematic clusters: core tech-driven outcomes, psychological well-being and place attachment, experience economy and sensory dimensions, authenticity and immersive heritage, and digital influence in rural tourism. Crucially, the thematic evolution illustrates a clear trajectory from foundational psychological constructs to technology-enhanced immersive experiences. The study concludes that destination managers must leverage smart tourism technologies alongside authentic cultural immersion to orchestrate highly personalized offerings. Furthermore, a methodological agenda is proposed, encouraging future scholars to balance Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) for exploratory frameworks with Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) for rigorous theory confirmation.