Advances in Hospitality and Leisure: Scopus, Scope & Submission Guide

Quick Answer: What Is Advances in Hospitality and Leisure?

AHL is an international annual peer-reviewed research series published by Emerald Publishing. Emerald describes its purpose as promoting innovative research in hospitality, leisure, tourism and lifestyle, including work that advances empirical research theoretically or methodologically and work on research questions that have received insufficient attention.

The publication is Scopus indexed according to Emerald’s own current series descriptions. It publishes full papers and research notes, including conceptual models and empirical studies. Recent volumes show an international author base and topics spanning sustainability, tourist behaviour, hotels, restaurants, destination development, service quality, leisure, technology and tourism policy or practice.

Before submitting, researchers should confirm three things: that the manuscript fits the scope and recent volume pattern; that the AHL publication format satisfies their institution’s definition of an acceptable journal or book-series output; and that the current Scopus status and any required metrics meet the institution’s rules.

Key Takeaways

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited.
• Source type: Annual peer-reviewed book series / research journal with contributions published as chapters in edited volumes.
• ISSN: 1745-3542; Scopus Source ID: 5300152530.
• Scopus: Emerald states that AHL is indexed in Scopus.
• Core scope: hospitality, leisure, tourism and lifestyle, with emphasis on innovative and underexplored questions.
• Article types: full papers and research notes; conceptual and empirical work are represented.
• Available submission guidance: approximately 7,000 words for a full paper and 4,000 words for a research note, 12-point Times Roman, double spaced, APA.
• Peer review: AHL describes itself as double-blind peer reviewed.

Journal Information at a Glance

What This Page Covers

• AHL aims, scope and subject coverage
• Scopus indexing and how to verify current metrics
• Full paper and research note formats
• Manuscript structure and submission requirements
• Peer review, ethics and originality expectations
• Open-access and publication-fee considerations
• Journal-fit assessment for PhD and faculty research
• Publication-readiness steps and ethical Contentxprtz support

Methodology and Sources

This profile was prepared from authoritative sources led by Emerald’s official series, volume, submission, author-rights, open-access and publishing-ethics pages, together with the supplied Scopus Source ID. The most useful official evidence includes the AHL series page, recent Emerald volume information, and Emerald’s research and publishing ethics guidance.

Metrics, indexing coverage, editorial arrangements, fees and policies can change. For that reason, this page avoids reproducing a current CiteScore, SJR, SNIP, quartile, Impact Factor, acceptance rate or average review time when an authoritative current value could not be confirmed. Researchers should recheck these items immediately before using them for institutional evaluation or making a submission decision.

What Is Advances in Hospitality and Leisure?

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure is designed as a research forum for scholarship across hospitality, leisure and tourism, with lifestyle also explicitly included in recent Emerald descriptions. Rather than organising research into conventional monthly or quarterly journal issues, AHL appears as an annual edited volume. Each volume contains research contributions as book chapters under the continuing series ISSN.

This format does not make the scholarship less scholarly: Emerald describes AHL as peer reviewed and recent volumes explicitly state a double-blind model. However, the format can matter administratively. A university may count a Scopus-indexed book-series chapter differently from an article in a conventional serial journal. Researchers publishing for a PhD requirement, promotion score, funding evaluation or national accreditation should check how their institution classifies this source type before submitting.

Recent volumes continue to be edited by Joseph S. Chen of Indiana University Bloomington. Emerald’s 2026 volume information describes the publication as annual since 2004 and focused on innovative research in hospitality, leisure, tourism and lifestyle.

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure Aims and Scope

The central aim is to promote original and innovative research that contributes to hospitality, leisure and tourism knowledge. Emerald’s descriptions consistently stress research issues and problems that are critical yet comparatively neglected, with the intention of stimulating new research agendas and advancing empirical work theoretically and methodologically.

The scope is broad enough to accommodate both disciplinary and interdisciplinary work. Examples from published volumes include tourism sustainability and climate change, tourist well-being, spa and leisure experiences, service quality in restaurants, destination planning, tourism employment, environmental resilience, customer retention, hospitality technology, organisational readiness, Airbnb, tourism risk, destination image, food experience, heritage tourism and mountain tourism.

Research approaches represented

AHL publishes conceptual and empirical research. Published volumes include quantitative and qualitative studies, conceptual models, inductive and deductive approaches and research notes. This gives authors methodological flexibility, but the method still needs to be justified by the research question and positioned as a meaningful contribution rather than used simply because it is familiar.

Topics likely to fit

• Hospitality management, hotel and restaurant research
• Tourist behaviour, experiences, motivation and satisfaction
• Leisure behaviour, well-being and participation
• Destination planning, development and competitiveness
• Sustainability, climate resilience and regenerative tourism
• Service quality, customer retention and hospitality operations
• Tourism technology, digital services and virtual experiences
• Hospitality marketing, branding and consumer behaviour
• Human resources, employment and organisational issues in hospitality
• Tourism impacts, risk, crises and policy or practice implications

A manuscript that only mentions hospitality or tourism in passing is less likely to be a natural fit. For researchers evaluating fit, the stronger question is whether the paper speaks directly to an AHL research community and whether its contribution is sufficiently novel, theoretically meaningful or methodologically informative.

Is Advances in Hospitality and Leisure Scopus Indexed?

Yes, Emerald states that Advances in Hospitality and Leisure is indexed in Scopus. The supplied source record is 5300152530 and the series ISSN is 1745-3542. These identifiers are the safest way to distinguish AHL from other journals with similar hospitality titles.

Scopus coverage and source status can change, and institutional rules may require a title to be active in a specific year. Use the official Scopus source profile to confirm current coverage immediately before submission or when documenting the publication for a PhD, promotion or funding file.

What about CiteScore, SJR, SNIP and quartile?

These values are time-sensitive. A current authoritative Scopus metric display was not publicly accessible during preparation of this page, so no number is reproduced here. This is preferable to copying a stale metric from a third-party ranking website. Check the latest Scopus profile for CiteScore and source percentile information and use the reporting year required by your institution.

Does AHL have a Journal Impact Factor?

A current Journal Impact Factor was not verified from an authoritative Clarivate source. Scopus indexing does not automatically mean that a title has a Journal Impact Factor. If a specific university rule requires JCR inclusion, verify the title in Clarivate’s current Master Journal List or Journal Citation Reports.

Article Types: Full Papers and Research Notes

AHL’s own submission guidance identifies two main contribution types: full papers and research notes. Recent Emerald volume descriptions confirm that both forms continue to appear.

Authors should treat these figures as the available published guidance, not as a permanent guarantee. Reconfirm the current requested length with the series editor before final formatting, especially if preparing a paper for a future volume.

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure Submission Guidelines

The available AHL guidelines are unusually specific. They call for 12-point Times Roman, double spacing and APA style, with different word limits for full papers and research notes.

Manuscript layout

1. First page: title of the paper and author contact information.
2. Second page: title of the paper, a 120–140 word abstract and keywords.
3. Third page onward: main text, appendix, references, figures and tables.

For literature-review papers, the guidance asks for an introduction, critical literature review, problems in prior research and suggestions for future research. For empirical papers, it asks for an introduction, methods, findings and discussions, and conclusion.

Originality requirement

The manuscript should be original, not previously published and not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere. This aligns with Emerald’s broader publishing-ethics requirements on originality, redundant publication, authorship, data integrity and conflicts of interest.

How is the manuscript submitted?

The historical AHL instructions specify electronic submission in Word format directly to the editor. Because contact details and workflows can change, this profile does not reproduce an email address from older guidance. Authors should use the current Emerald series information or contact route to confirm the correct submission method for the next volume.

Peer Review and Editorial Process

AHL describes itself as double-blind peer reviewed. In practical terms, this means the review process is intended to conceal author and reviewer identities from each other. Authors should therefore prepare the review file in a way that avoids unnecessary identifying information outside the designated title/contact material.

An official AHL acceptance rate was not found, and this page does not estimate one. Likewise, an official average manuscript review duration for AHL was not verified. Emerald publishes general peer-review guidance, but general publisher timelines should not be presented as if they were AHL-specific performance statistics.

For publication readiness, focus on what reviewers can evaluate: originality, fit, coherent theory, appropriate methods, transparent analysis, justified conclusions, accurate references and clear writing.

Open Access, Publication Fees and Author Rights

AHL is not presented by Emerald as a fully open-access series; current volumes are offered for purchase. The available AHL submission guidance reviewed for this article does not state a mandatory APC for ordinary submission. Therefore, a publication fee should not be invented or inferred from the retail price of an Emerald volume.

Emerald separately offers open-access routes for books and chapters. Its book open-access policy includes optional paid gold OA for chapters, while its author-rights policy provides a green route allowing book-chapter authors to make the author accepted manuscript openly available after official publication without an embargo.

If open access is important because of a funder mandate, institutional policy or personal preference, ask Emerald which route applies to an AHL contribution and confirm the current charge before agreeing to gold OA. Payment for an optional open-access route should never be interpreted as purchasing editorial acceptance.

Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

Emerald’s publishing-ethics framework makes authors responsible for the integrity of their manuscript. Relevant issues include plagiarism and text recycling, redundant publication, attribution and authorship, coercive citation, defamation, fabricated data, unethical research or testing and conflicts of interest.

Authors should also disclose relevant financial support, obtain necessary permissions for third-party material, and ensure that all listed authors made meaningful contributions. Emerald’s current policies state that generative AI tools cannot be credited as authors and that authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality and integrity of submitted content.

As a practical publication-readiness step, verify every citation against the source, retain research approvals and consent documentation where applicable, preserve underlying analysis records, disclose conflicts and funding, and check whether reused figures, tables or long extracts require permission.

Who Should Consider Submitting to AHL?

AHL may suit researchers whose manuscript makes a clear contribution to hospitality, tourism, leisure or lifestyle research and whose question aligns with the series’ interest in innovative, underexplored or agenda-setting work. It may be particularly relevant for researchers who want an international audience and whose paper combines a strong scholarly contribution with implications for future research or professional practice.

A strong potential fit

• The research question is central to hospitality, tourism, leisure or lifestyle.
• The paper explains what is new, neglected or theoretically important.
• The method is appropriate and transparently reported.
• The findings are interpreted in relation to prior scholarship, not merely described.
• The manuscript can be presented as a full paper or research note within the stated length.
• Recent AHL volumes contain related themes or methods, while the manuscript still adds something distinctive.

Possible reasons to choose another outlet

• The paper’s main contribution belongs to another discipline and hospitality/tourism is only the setting.
• The institution requires a conventional journal article rather than a chapter in a Scopus-indexed book series.
• The manuscript needs a very rapid publication schedule and no AHL-specific review timeline is available.
• The paper depends on a current quartile, JIF or ranking requirement that has not yet been verified.
• The study is primarily descriptive and does not articulate a meaningful conceptual, methodological or practical contribution.

How to Prepare a Stronger AHL-Aligned Manuscript

1. Audit recent volumes. Read several recent AHL chapters and identify recurring questions, theoretical lenses, methods and standards of contribution.
2. Write the contribution before polishing the prose. State what the paper adds to hospitality, tourism or leisure knowledge and why the question matters now.
3. Match the article type. Use a full paper when the contribution requires a developed theory-method-results-discussion structure; use a research note only when the shorter format is genuinely appropriate.
4. Follow the stated manuscript architecture. Prepare the title/contact page, abstract and keywords page, then the blinded main manuscript.
5. Check methodological transparency. Explain sampling, measures, data collection, analytical choices, limitations and the connection between results and claims.
6. Use APA consistently. Cross-check every in-text citation against the reference list and verify bibliographic details at source.
7. Strengthen the discussion. Compare findings with prior literature, explain theoretical implications and make realistic practice or policy implications.
8. Run an ethics and permissions check. Confirm approvals, consent, conflicts, funding, author contributions and third-party permissions where relevant.
9. Reconfirm live requirements. Before submission, verify the current contact route, length, Scopus status and any applicable OA charge.

Journal-Fit Checklist Before Submission

How Contentxprtz Can Support Publication Readiness

Contentxprtz can support authors ethically before and after submission through journal publication services, manuscript assessment, academic editing, proofreading, journal formatting, reference and citation consistency checks, cover-letter editing and reviewer-response editing.

For an AHL-targeted manuscript, useful support may include checking whether the abstract clearly states the contribution, improving the logical flow from literature gap to research question, polishing methods and results language without changing the underlying science, aligning references to APA style, and reviewing the paper against the selected full-paper or research-note format.

Contentxprtz does not guarantee acceptance, publication, peer-review success, indexing or citation outcomes. The author remains responsible for the research, data, interpretation, source accuracy, ethical compliance and final submission, while all editorial decisions remain with AHL and Emerald.

Summary: Is Advances in Hospitality and Leisure a Good Fit?

Advances in Hospitality and Leisure is a long-running annual Emerald peer-reviewed series with Scopus indexing stated by the publisher, a clear focus on hospitality, leisure, tourism and lifestyle, and a publication pattern that includes both full papers and research notes. Its strongest fit is likely to be research that is novel, internationally relevant and able to advance theory, method or professional understanding in these fields.

The most important caution is format: AHL operates as an annual book series in which individual research contributions are published as chapters. Researchers should confirm that this publication type satisfies their institutional requirement. They should also verify current Scopus coverage and any required metric or quartile directly before submitting.

Final Publication-Readiness Checklist

• Verify Scopus Source ID 5300152530 and current source status.
• Confirm your institution accepts this source type for the intended academic purpose.
• Choose full paper or research note and reconfirm the current word limit.
• Follow the AHL title page, abstract/keywords page and manuscript layout.
• Use APA consistently and verify every citation.
• Check novelty, theory, methods, results, limitations and implications.
• Complete ethics, authorship, funding, conflict and permissions checks.
• Confirm the current submission contact route and any open-access charge before paying.