Sustainability and marketing in tourism: its contexts, paradoxes, approaches, challenges and potential

Abstract

Tourism marketing has typically been seen as exploitative and fuelling hedonistic consumerism. Sustainability marketing can, however, use marketing skills and techniques to good purpose, by understanding market needs, designing more sustainable products and identifying more persuasive methods of communication to bring behavioural change. This article summarises the latest research on the theories, methods and results of marketing that seeks to make tourist destinations better places to live in, and better places to visit. It explores sustainability marketing's two fundamental approaches, that of market development, using market segmentation, and that of sustainable product development. It introduces a Special Issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism on sustainable marketing, sharing evidence on the motivations, mechanisms and barriers that businesses encounter, and on successes in changing consumer behaviour and pursuing sustainability goals. Particular attention is given to the methodologies of sustainable tourism marketing, to the subject's breadth and complexity, and to its many innovations. Further research is called for to fully understand what contextual aspects influence these prosustainability interventions to achieve which outcomes in other settings, in order to validate some of the exploratory studies discussed, and establish the feasibility of scaling up pilot studies for more general use.

Carbon labels on restaurant menus: do people pay attention to them?

“…Providing such information may be helpful to educate consumers about the environmental impact of food consumption, but it is not effective in encouraging behavioural change (Campbell-Arvai et al, 2014). Our findings confirm that communication of environmental information does not necessarily make the issue of sustainability relevant to decision-making (Font & McCabe, 2017).…”

Influence of Sustainability Practices and Green Image on the Re-Visit Intention of Small and Medium-Size Towns

“…Moreover, although there are differences between the two, these concepts are inseparable. While sustainability refers to a social and economic macro-project that is aimed at the individual and social welfare of the population [14], social responsibility corresponds to the strategic and operational responses of the city concerning sustainability [15,16].…”

Mapping Entrepreneurs’ Orientation towards Sustainability in Interaction versus Network Marketing Practices

“…Subsequently, the research objectives are: (1) to place the inferred relationships in a comparative setup, with a view to properly map the distinctive influences of the entrepreneurs' orientation towards sustainability on relational marketing models specificity. Here, exploring distinct and multifaceted marketing practices-i.e., interaction marketing (IM) and network marketing (NM)-to give voice to business sustainability involves a more prolific perspective on the heterogeneity of the market opportunities and the entrepreneur's versatility [22]; (2) to deepen the analysis of the hypothesized relationships by including a categorical variable as moderator-the entrepreneurs' option for planned versus emergent business strategies in managing their firms-building here on the logic of previous studies [23,24]. The main questions to be answered to are: To what extent can sustainability orientation be traceable in firms' relational marketing practices?…”