Being sustainable reflects a need to appreciate tourist demands in line with the needs of the local community, industry, and environment. In other words, there should be measures to assess a place’s sustainable practices from the eye of the beholders. This study works to develop the concept of destination green equity, which is defined as tourist perception of a destination’s environmental initiatives, and explores its moderating role in the relationship between product and destination satisfaction. Drawing on the goal setting/striving theoretical stream of work, we propose a moderation model of green equity for the relationship between tourism product and destination satisfaction. Based on a sample of over 400 tourists, results reveal that a place’s green equity moderates the effect of food/transportation satisfaction in that the effect is more acute for the high green equity group. This study contributes to the literature by showcasing how environmental initiatives such as recycling and reducing energy consumption could ultimately elevate tourist satisfaction with a destination’s food and transportation offerings. The four-item green equity measure offers scholars and practitioners with a fairly simple and yet comprehensive way to assess a destination’s ecological achievement from the viewpoint of tourists. It also opens an avenue for assessing a place’s greening efforts and the conditioning impacts of such efforts on tourists.

Purpose This research paper aims to explore Airbnb’s online experience initiative, which has sparked a new wave of virtual tourism to improvise a large assortment of experiential activities through cyberspace. It works to answer questions pertinent to the type of virtual experiences tourists seek and how these experiences could fulfill tourist needs, thereby rendering favorable socio-mental outcomes through experiences encountered. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on travel experience and transformative tourism theoretical tenets, this qualitative inquiry used data collected from social media posts from virtual tourists. Findings Results reveal four major themes of online experiences – hedonism, attention restoration, social relatedness and self-exaltation – that encompass 12 experiential categories. They further underscore four types of transformative mechanisms pinpointing hedonic well-being, environmental-mastery well-being, social well-being and eudaimonic well-being. Research limitations/implications Research findings demonstrate how Airbnb exercised marketing agility during severe environmental plight; while expediting strategic initiatives that offer tourists and residents alike a means to reengage in leisure and travel activities at home. They also salvage the peer-to-peer community by turning accommodation hosts into online experience ambassadors. Originality/value The contribution of this inquiry lies in assessing virtual experiences and reconnecting how different cyber experiences can meet an array of tourist needs. This study further highlights the transformative virtual experience paradigm to lay the necessary theoretical foundation for future research on virtual transformative tourism. This research goes beyond the common understanding of transformative tourism that relies merely on corporeal encounters. From a practical point of view, this study brings light to a novel concept – sharing experience economy – that incorporates the nuances between sharing economy and experience economy.