Abstract
The framework recently proposed by Nieto-García et al. (2023) presents a provocative critique of tourism research, identifying “researcher myopia” as a systematic failure to measure actual behavior. This commentary, through empirical validation with a large-scale tourism monitoring project, reveals the limitations of stated intentions, and highlights the necessity of behavioral measurement (i.e., Real Data) as a foundation for effective tourism policy. As McCabe (2024) argues, advancing theory in tourism requires grounding conceptual frameworks in rigorous empirical observation rather than relying solely on theoretical abstraction.
Ferrara, M.; Lasarov, W.; Viglia, G. 2026. Validating tourism modeling with real data. Annals of tourism research : Pergamon-Elsevier Science. ISSN 0160-7383. 117, 104130, p. 1–9. DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2026.104130. [Scopus; Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science)].