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[References: 71 tit.]

This study develops a literature review of hotel performance studies, and provides insights by adopting a cross-citation network approach. Two research questions are defined. First question focuses on the most cross-cited papers and journals, and identifies salient trends. Second question considers who are the most popular cross-cited and citing authors. This work is rooted in bibliometric studies, and adopts a relational approach. Based on cross-citations, a network is built by using 734 papers published during the period 1996–2015, as nodes and the cross-citations between them as links. Exploratory analysis reveals spectacular growth of outputs, with the last time period (2011–2015) including 56% of outputs. The most cross-cited papers possess the characteristics of: being older; representing 1% of sample but accounting for 14% of cross-citations. The 734 papers are published in 164 journals, but they show a clear core-periphery structure with International Journal of Hospitality Management ranked first.