The tourism activity has faced several challenges worldwide and the
private sector alone cannot deal with all these challenges, which is why the public
administration needs to intervene, including at the local level, in several areas, such as
tourism promotion, tourism infrastructure, tourism coordination/planning, tourism
information dissemination, among others. This paper aims to analyze the dynamics
of tourism research in a local public management perspective by exploring the main
topics and areas of action of local governments, through a bibliometric analysis. The
main results suggest that most of the selected studies stress the relevance of local
governments taking a central role in tourism management, planning and promotion,
so that both public and private sectors benefit, and residents do not have to directly
face their negative impacts.
