The concept of sustainability in hotel industry: current dominant orientations and future issues

Abstract

This paper aims at reviewing the main literature on sustainability in the hotel industry through the analysis of 142 papers published in eight leading hospitality journals from the year 2000 to the year 2017. This paper proposes an in-depth focus on three dimensions of sustainability (i.e.,economic, environmental, social), applying the hotel sustainable business model (Mihali et al., 2012) as a framework of analysis. Moreover, distributions across time period, research methodologies employed and study locations are investigated. The findings that emerge from the literature review identify dominant research orientations related to sustainability in the hotel context, enabling the recognition of research gaps in the literature. Concerning the future, the main challenge is the adoption of a more integrated approach that takes full account of the economic, environmental and social dimensions of the sustainable development. In addition, starting from the application of the hotel sustainable business model (Mihali et al., 2012), this study proposes an evolution of the framework of analysis in order to integrate in the model the latest sustainable challenges that the industry is facing.