Editorial

Abstract

Since the turn of the 21st century, research output in tourism and hospitality has increased tremendously (Mulet-Forteza et al. 2019). Simultaneously, there has been an increased interest in qualitative tourism and hospitality research (McGinley et al. 2020; Wilson et al. 2020), as an interpretive frame for the understanding of the tourism phenomenon. As a result, there was a need to create an international scientific tourism and hospitality journal focusing solely upon qualitative research. The Journal of Qualitative Research in Tourism (JQRT), published by Edward Elgar Publishing, has been established in order to be dedicated exclusively to the qualitative interpretation and analysis of tourism and hospitality. The journal aims to mark an important milestone as the first ever journal on the very important area of qualitative research in tourism and hospitality. The purpose of this editorial is fourfold: first, to explain the need for a new journal on qualitative research in tourism and hospitality; second, to set the scene by which the journal was conceived and the context in which it aims to operate; third, to introduce the journal's objectives and its inaugural issue; and, fourth, to acknowledge the contributions of authors, reviewers, members of the scientific committee and the publisher to the launching of the first issue and to make a call for engagement and collaboration to all interested parties. RATIONALE FOR LAUNCHING A NEW JOURNAL In the age of information abundance, the initiative of starting a new, academic journal requires some explanation and justification. Qualitative research methods are not newcomers to the fields of hospitality and tourism. Nevertheless, qualitative research in tourism and hospitality occurred relatively late compared to the wider social sciences (Wilson et al. 2020). In fact, tourism scholars' publications utilizing qualitative approaches have been apparent since the 1970s (Dann et al. 1988). The early studies were dominated by ethnographic research approaches and the study of human behavior, and aimed to explore ideas and that would provide an understanding of the tourism phenomenon (McKercher 2018). Therefore, most pioneering early papers greatly contributed to the creation and development of a multidisciplinary tourism social science (Nash 2007) and were qualitative, written particularly by anthropologists, sociologists and geographers (see for example the studies of