Despite the existence of many published articles that examined research productivity in hospitality and tourism, prior studies on research productivity per capita in institutes are rare, if ever any. The novel contribution of this research lies in the utilization of a new method to measure research productivity by analyzing the total and per capita research productivity of the top 50 most productive institutes in hospitality and tourism. The findings showed that the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Sun Yat-Sen University ranked in the top two positions in total research productivity in 2022 and 2023. However, regarding faculty research productivity per capita, the University of Queensland and Washington State University claimed the first and second spots in 2022, respectively. Xiamen University and the University of Macau emerged as leaders in 2023. These divergent results depict the multi-facets of an institute’s research productivity, urging researchers to comprehend the research productivity of institutes from various aspects.