Genre Analysis of abstract writing has drawn academicians’ attention in recent years. The rhetorical organization of
research article abstracts has undergone several studies (Swales 1990, Bhatia 1997, Salager-Meyer 1990, Don
Santos 1996, Hyland 2000 & 2005, Tseng 2011). Their studies focused mainly on cross-linguistic and crossdisciplinary
aspects of this part-genre. This study looks into the rhetorical organization specifically of tourism
research article abstracts, which has either been under represented or overlooked. A corpus of 35 tourism research
article abstracts was chosen randomly to describe the move-structure. Results suggest significant variations in the
move-structure method and strategies for realization of communication objectives by the authors. Both linguistic
and pedagogical implications are discussed at the end.