Research Methods in Tourism, Hospitality and Events Management

6.4.4 Content analysis

Another method of research that you can employ is content analysis. This is

where you analyse documents or images for themes and ideas which you

report on. This is often a useful thing to do before you engage in further

research such as interviews. A good example of this that I supervised

recently was an undergraduate student who was researching the talent

management process at a case study hotel. He started the research by

looking at all the published documents that the organisation had on the topic

before he completed in-depth interviews with a sample of managers and

staff at the second stage. The documents were analysed using the themes

which had emerged in the literature review.

I also recently heard a research paper that was about the findings from a

PhD study. The student in this case had analysed photographs that tourists

had taken during their holidays in Scotland to explore the importance of

certain features of the country through the eyes of the tourists. He then

made comparisons between tourists with different demographic

backgrounds. This research revealed new and interesting insights into the

tourist view of the country and provided both academics and the destination

marketing office with new and unique information.