Tourism industry resilience issues in urban areas during COVID-19

Purpose COVID-19 impacts different groups and subsectors of tourism unevenly, with massive vulnerabilities in tourism operating systems among urban tourism areas. Different types of COVID-19 related crises depend on isolation or returning to “normal” in various urban areas. Boosting domestic tourism activities to spark resilience before international demand returns is essential to stimulating local demand worldwide. This paper aims to build upon a non-exhaustive review of the scientific literature about tourism resilience issues to see the bigger picture of tourism resilience on three levels worldwide. Design/methodology/approach This research applies a content analysis technique to collect research data from the latest scientific papers on tourism resilience issues. This study will use searching and filtering on the Scopus web database and based on the VOSviewer algorithm to identify useful insights and determine a framework for tourism resilience issues on three levels. Findings The outcome of three aspects of resilience, which mainly relate to the development of tourism industry sectors (transportation, accommodation, food and beverage) and other industries (research and education) connected to urban tourism resilience, could be useful for future researchers to explore less-studied issues and policymakers’ future application. Research limitations/implications The research data are mostly from literature reviews of papers that may not interpret all contemporary resilience issues and the research data are based on urban areas alone. Originality/value The research idea is fresh and adds new knowledge to professionals’ or policymakers’ future applications.