Originality: The Holy Grail of Tourism Research

Abstract

Originality is an important goal of research. However, relatively little is known about the characteristics and motivations of individual researchers or about the facilitating or hindering factors that, in combination, can lead to original research outputs. This is a gap this study aims to fill. Interviews with 20 highly original academics (identified by their peers) active in the field of tourism identify four shared main traits among such researchers—nonconformism, commitment, self-confidence, and interdisciplinarity—and the importance of situational factors. The findings also show that there is no single optimum way of “becoming original” and, therefore, efforts to “replicate” originality may constrain rather than enable originality. From a managerial perspective, this suggests that it is easier to remove barriers than to positively facilitate original research.