Abstract
The increasing wealth and economic development have dramatically driven rapid growth in the tourism industry, making it one of the fastest growing and developing industries worldwide. Tourism entrepreneurship should involve adopting a green business model innovation that is more efficient and leads to low carbon production to balance the needs of the tourists with those of their desired destinations. Despite sustainability being a core concept in current policies and trends in the last decade, most company managers in the tourism industry are yet to incorporate it into the agenda. Based on this research gap, a systematic review of the bibliometric literature was conducted, and data was synthesized from 80 documents identified through the Scopus indexation using. This chapter aims to evaluate the challenges and opportunities of innovation sustainability in tourism entrepreneurship, thus building a clear image of what should be done to overcome the obstacles and increase awareness of the need for sustainable tourism.
TopMethodological Approach
The methodology used was a systematic review of the bibliometric literature to identify and select relevant sources and synthesized data to create an evidence-based report implementable in tourism business practice. This methodology was selected based on Xiao and Watson's (2019) recognition of systematic reviews as a critical feature of knowledge advancement and academic research. The scholars explain that understanding the breadth and depth of existing literature helps identify gaps to explore, inconsistencies, and contradictions. In this regard, summarizing, analyzing, and synthesizing literature will help understand the sustainability innovations in the tourism sector, opportunities for growth, and challenges anticipated and hindering progress. Such insights can improve the planning and integration of sustainability goals and efforts into the overall tourism organizational processes and practices. Consequently, the methodology can be used to decipher and map cumulative scientific knowledge and emerging variations of a well-established topic (Rosário, 2021; Rosário & Dias, 2022; Rosário, et al., 2021)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sustainable Innovation: involves making intentional changes to a company's products, services, or processes to generate long-term social and environmental benefits while creating economic profits for the firm.
Geographical Information Systems (GIS): is a system of hardware, software, spatial information, computational procedures and human resources that allows and facilitates the analysis, management or representation of geographic information.
GDP: gross domestic product represents the sum of all final goods and services produced in a given region during a given period.
Entrepreneurship: the initiative process of implementing new businesses or changes in existing businesses.
World Trade Organization (WTO): It is an institution created with the objective of supervising and liberalizing international trade.
Environment management information system (EMIS): defined as 'technical-organizational systems for obtaining, processing and systematically making available relevant environmental information in companies'.
Sustainable Tourism: it is a type of tourism that includes concern for sustainability (economic, social and environmental), attention to improving tourist experiences and meeting the needs of host communities.