![Sample our Tourism, Hospitality and Events journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5950/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Tourism-Hospitality-Events.jpg"})
Abstract
Progressing sustainable tourism requires both an innovative transition from “unsustainable” tourism and innovative research methods to develop theory and concepts for a sustainable tourism. While there are many ad hoc examples of initiatives, there are very few examples of firms systematically recording their medium-term evolutionary progress. This case study of an accommodation provider uses longitudinal data over 14 years, deductive and inductive methods, and comparison with other similar eco-friendly providers, to provide the first exploration of sustainability-oriented innovation by a firm attempting to make transitions. Findings show how important hindsight and insight are for continuous learning, and how broader community sustainability issues influence the owners’ worldviews. Both learning and changing views are required to support innovation. A Sustainability-oriented Service Innovation model is recommended, recognising the characteristics of a service industry where innovation can be an organic process led by humans for humans and consequently more fuzzy in its progress than the clearly defined steps that are suggested by previous research. This model seeks to assist researchers and practitioners to better measure innovative progress of service firms, and develop more relevant strategies to ease transitions towards sustainable business practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Christopher Warren is the Founder of My Green Butler. He is a tourism practitioner, qualified trainer/ assessor, and has contributed as a board member to community, local government, regional, state and national tourism bodies for over 16 years. Christopher’s research interest is Sustainability-oriented Innovation and guest participation experience design. He has lived in four continents and worked in 18 countries.
Dr Susanne Becken is the Director of the Griffith Institute for Tourism and Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University, Australia. Susanne has led government-funded research programmes and consultancy work in New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Tunisia and for UNWTO, UNISDR and UNESCO. Susanne is on the editorial boards of Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, and the Tourism Review.
Dr Alexandra Coghlan is an Associate Professor in Tourism at Griffith University’s Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management. Her primary research interests focus on the process of adding positive social and environmental outcomes to tourism experiences, mainly in volunteer tourism, environmental education, transformative experiences and nature-based tourism more broadly.