From reviews to reality: tourist perceptions of sustainability in the top 15 global sustainable hotels

Date

2025-05-20

Director

Publisher

Taylor & Francis
Acceso abierto / Sarbide irekia
Artículo / Artikulua
Versión publicada / Argitaratu den bertsioa

Project identifier

Impacto
OpenAlexGoogle Scholar
No disponible en Scopus

Abstract

This study assesses tourists' perceptions of sustainability in hotels labelled as 'sustainable' by analysing 10,361 TripAdvisor online travel reviews. The goal is to address gaps in sustainable tourism literature and understand tourists' perspectives. Content analysis is applied to reviews from 15 of the world's most sustainable hotels on TripAdvisor. Analysing keywords aims to understand tourists' perceptions, emphasising the significance of online reviews and utilising rigorous Big Data analytics. Despite sustainability branding, tourists often overlook sustainable aspects in their reviews, revealing incongruity between industry perceptions and consumer awareness which emphasises the need for tailored marketing and management strategies. This study contributes to the existing literature by examining the tangible perception of sustainability in online reviews. It highlights a potential gap in tourists' understanding of sustainability and their ability to recognise its value. Additionally, it underscores the industry's insufficient emphasis on marketing strategies to effectively communicate hotels' sustainability features. The findings encourage sustainable hotels to adopt robust digital marketing strategies to enhance global visibility and promote their environmental initiatives. Ultimately, the study emphasises the critical role of marketing in shaping tourists' perceptions of sustainability.

Description

Keywords

UGC, User-generated content, OTRs, Online travel reviews, Sustainable hotels, Tourist perceptions

Department

Gestión de Empresas / Enpresen Kudeaketa

Faculty/School

Degree

Doctorate program

item.page.cita

Boneta-Ruiz, A., Aramendia-Muneta, M. E., Gómez-Cámara, I. (2025) From reviews to reality: tourist perceptions of sustainability in the top 15 global sustainable hotels. Tourism Recreation Research, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2025.2495665.

item.page.rights

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or builtupon in any way.

Licencia

Los documentos de Academica-e están protegidos por derechos de autor con todos los derechos reservados, a no ser que se indique lo contrario.