Sustainable Tourism Management and Service Quality

Dear Colleagues,

Service quality constitutes a key element for tourism businesses since several favorable consequences have been attributed to correctly managing the quality of the service provided. Particularly in today’s competitive business world, service quality is considered a crucial tool for improving long-term relationships with customers and subsequent business performance.

Nonetheless, from a broader perspective, and in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while addressing the needs of tourists and the tourism industry is essential, other factors have also become important in tourism development. In this regard, according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)’s guidelines, sustainable tourism development should take full account of its current and future economic, sociocultural, and environmental impacts. Thus, pursuing sustainable tourism development constitutes a challenge for a destination, mainly due to the difficulty of achieving the desirable balance among the three interrelated dimensions to consider.

In this context, the ongoing development of sustainable types of tourism, such as rural tourism, ecotourism, or agrotourism, should be highlighted. Their growth indicates that these alternative types of tourism greatly match the expectations of many individuals. In fact, some research has already focused on analyzing tourists’ service quality perceptions within the framework of these sustainable forms of tourism. However, further knowledge on the topic is desirable, especially because of the potential beneficial role that these new types of tourism play in the advancement of rural areas.

Additionally, immersed in the current global inclination toward sustainability, businesses are progressively becoming more sustainable. For example, lodging businesses are increasingly including traditional local products (e.g., food, beverages) in their offer, and they are adopting environmentally sustainable practices (e.g., low-consumption illumination, water-saving systems) that reduce their ecological footprint. Thus, under these circumstances, it becomes relevant to know to what extent tourists’ perceptions of service quality might indeed be positively affected by the implementation of sustainability measures.

As a consequence, for this Special Issue, papers dealing with sustainable tourism management and service quality are welcomed. Quantitative research or mixed research (quantitative and qualitative) will be especially appreciated, in the form of cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies, case studies, etc.

The following are some examples of potential topics:

- Sustainable types of tourism (rural tourism, ecotourism) and service quality;

- Content analysis of eWOM to identify sustainability-related attributes (conservation of built and living cultural heritage, environmentally sustainable practices, etc.);

- Relationship between corporate social responsibility and tourists’ service quality perceptions;

- Sustainability and tourists’ service quality expectations;

- Relationship between residents’ attitudes toward tourism and tourists’ service quality perceptions;

- Sustainability and tourism destination service quality;

- Segmentation studies;

-Cross-cultural studies.

Prof. Dr. Rosa M. Hernández-Maestro
Prof. Dr. Óscar González-Benito
Guest Editors

• service quality
• eWOM
• sustainable tourism development
• rural tourism
• ecotourism
• agrotourism
• corporate social responsibility
• segmentation