Tourist Satisfaction, Sustainability, and Sustainable Tourism Development

Sustainability has become one of the most influential paradigms shaping contemporary tourism research and practice. This is due to the fact that tourism accounts for about 8% of all greenhouse gas/carbon emissions in the world [1]. Moreover, mass tourism results in the overuse and depletion of water and other resources, as well as the loss of natural habitats, increased contamination and pollution [2]. Also, tourism may have negative economic and social implications, such as causing harm to historical monuments and relics [3], as well as causing commercial gentrification, escalating property values and housing costs, as well as broadening the gender gap [4,5].

Based on the above, over the past two decades, tourism scholars, policymakers, destination managers, and hospitality practitioners have increasingly begun to recognize that the long-term success of tourism destinations depends not only on economic performance but also on environmental stewardship, socio-cultural preservation, and visitor well-being. At the same time, tourist satisfaction remains a central determinant of destination competitiveness, revisit intentions, positive word-of-mouth communication, and long-term sustainability. Consequently, understanding the relationship between tourists and sustainable tourism development has become one of the most important areas of inquiry within tourism and hospitality research.

The growing significance of sustainability in tourism has been driven by several developments. First, increasing environmental challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, food waste, and pollution, have highlighted the need for more sustainable tourism practices. Second, tourists themselves have become more environmentally conscious and socially responsible, creating pressure on tourism businesses to adopt sustainable business models. Third, rapid technological developments, including smart tourism systems, digital platforms, online travel agencies, artificial intelligence, and sustainability certification systems, have transformed how tourists search for information, make decisions, evaluate experiences, and communicate their satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Despite substantial progress, important gaps remain in our understanding of how sustainability influences tourist experiences and satisfaction. While many studies have examined sustainability from managerial, environmental, or policy perspectives, fewer studies have investigated the psychological and behavioral mechanisms through which sustainability affects tourists. Similarly, research has often treated sustainability and tourist satisfaction as separate constructs rather than examining their dynamic interactions. Furthermore, emerging phenomena such as smart tourism technologies, digital servicescapes, sustainability communication, cultural identity, sustainable consumption behavior, and the role of consumer psychology in sustainability decisions remain underexplored.

This Special Issue, “Tourist Satisfaction, Sustainability, and Sustainable Tourism Development: Second Edition”, was developed to address these gaps. The Special Issue attracted considerable international interest from researchers. The accepted papers represent diverse geographical contexts, theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and tourism settings. Collectively, they contribute to advancing our understanding of how sustainability, technology, culture, psychology, communication, and consumer behavior influence tourist experiences and sustainable tourism development.

The papers included in this Special Issue cover a broad spectrum of topics ranging from smart hotels and nighttime tourism to cultural heritage tourism, sustainability communication, sustainable restaurants, online travel platforms, place-making processes, and sustainable hotel consumption behaviors. Together, these studies demonstrate the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of sustainable tourism research and provide valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners.

The first paper is about smart technologies, human interaction, and tourist satisfaction and it investigates customer satisfaction in smart hotels. As smart technologies have become increasingly integrated into hospitality operations, hotel managers face the challenge of balancing technological efficiency with human interaction. Using online reviews from 42 smart hotels, the authors have developed a prioritization method for service improvement and identify key service attributes requiring managerial attention.

The findings of the study indicate that while guests generally appreciate smart technologies, technology alone cannot guarantee customer satisfaction. Long check-in waiting times, employee attitudes and competencies, and breakfast quality emerged as major sources of dissatisfaction. Perhaps most importantly, the study suggests that smart hotels should adopt hybrid service models that combine technological innovations with efficient and effective human interaction. The findings of the study can be said to contribute significantly to current debates regarding technology-driven tourism experiences. While technological solutions are often promoted as pathways toward greater efficiency and sustainability, the study reminds us that tourism remains fundamentally a human-centered service industry. Sustainable tourism development requires not only technological innovation but also the preservation of the interpersonal and cultural elements that create emotional resonance and enhance perceived experience quality to ensure lasting memories for visitors.

The second paper is on nighttime tourism and urban sustainability and it examines tourist satisfaction within nighttime urban tourism environments through a case study of the Daming Lake Scenic Area in China. Nighttime tourism has emerged as an increasingly important component of urban tourism development due to its potential to diversify tourism products, increase visitor spending, reduce daytime congestion, and improve destination competitiveness.

Having used the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Model and revised Importance–Performance Analysis, the study identifies the factors that increase and decrease tourist satisfaction. Positive influences include attractive lighting design, diverse entertainment opportunities, distinctive shopping experiences, affordable dining options, and efficient transportation systems. Conversely, excessive pricing, problems experienced in transportation, insufficient cultural content, and safety concerns tend to influence tourist satisfaction negatively. The study contributes to the sustainable tourism literature by demonstrating that nighttime tourism provides a viable pathway for extending tourism activity beyond traditional daytime periods, facilitating a more temporally balanced and sustainable distribution of visitor flows. However, achieving sustainable nighttime tourism requires careful management of infrastructure, pricing, safety, and cultural authenticity. The findings yield actionable insights for destination managers and tourism businesses seeking to balance economic vitality with long-term sustainability in the development of nighttime tourism economies.

The third paper is about cultural heritage tourism, identity, and loyalty and it engages with an increasingly pressing challenge in cultural tourism research: the tension between preserving authenticity and visitor engagement and the concurrent pressures of commercialization and cultural homogenization. Focusing on intangible cultural heritage (ICH) tourism, the authors employ the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework to examine the relationships among perceived authenticity, perceived vitality, tourism involvement, experiential value, cultural identity, and tourist loyalty. The findings show that authenticity and vitality positively influence loyalty of tourists both directly and indirectly through experiential value. Furthermore, cultural identity significantly moderates several relationships within the proposed framework. Based on these above findings, the study contributes to tourism and sustainability literature by emphasizing the crucial role of cultural identity in sustainable heritage tourism. As cultural resources are increasingly mobilized for tourism development, maintaining authenticity in cultural experiences appears to be a key determinant of long-term sustainability. The findings suggest that sustainable heritage tourism requires not merely preserving cultural assets but also facilitating meaningful identity-based connections between visitors and local culture.

A persistent challenge in sustainable tourism relates to the effectiveness of the communication of sustainability initiatives. Although organizations increasingly adopt environmentally responsible practices, tourists often tend to be unaware of these efforts. The fourth paper on sustainability communication and consumer attention addresses this issue through the application of eye-tracking technology as a psychophysiological tool. Using experimental methods, the study investigates how tourists visually process sustainability-related cues within tourism advertisements. The results of the study show that sustainability messages have to compete with visually dominant elements such as destination images and price information. While sustainability cues are noticed, they rarely receive primary attention unless consumers possess high levels of ecological awareness. This research contributes to sustainable tourism literature by providing objective evidence regarding attention allocation processes. The findings show that the simple dissemination of sustainability-related information is unlikely to be effective in cultivating sustainability attitudes and behaviors. Instead, tourism marketers need to strategically design and position sustainability messages to attract attention and influence tourists’ decision-making processes.

The fifth paper is about sense of place and sustainable destination development and it explores the construction of sense of place within tourism spaces through a case study of Harbin Morning Market. Using grounded theory, the authors develop an analytical framework incorporating spatial, human, and material dimensions. The study challenges highly modernist approaches to destination development that prioritize standardization, control, and efficiency. Instead, it shows that place identity emerges through the interaction of spatial design, human actors, and material networks. Tourists become active participants rather than passive observers, contributing to the co-creation of place experiences. Hence, the findings offer important implications for sustainable tourism development. In an era characterized by increasing destination homogenization, preserving local uniqueness and encouraging spontaneous interactions become essential components of sustainability. The study demonstrates that sustainable tourism spaces should facilitate authentic participation and community vitality rather than relying exclusively on top-down planning approaches.

The sixth paper is about sustainability certification and tourist perceptions and it investigates how sustainability- and service-related cues influence perceptions of sustainability-certified hotels. Drawing upon Cue Utilization Theory, the authors analyze online reviews of sustainability-certified hotels collected from a major online travel platform over a twenty-year period. The findings reveal that guests primarily tend to focus on traditional service quality indicators such as employee performance, food quality, and accommodation facilities. Sustainability-related themes appear less frequently and are often associated with nature-oriented tourism experiences. Furthermore, sentiment analysis demonstrates that emotional evaluations are largely driven by service quality rather than sustainability initiatives. Hence, the study draws parallels with the studies on smart hotels (first paper) and communication (sixth paper). Tourists tend to place the emotional evaluations at the center of the overall service experience evaluations. The findings of the study emphasize an important gap within the field of sustainability in tourism. While tourism businesses increasingly invest in sustainability certifications and environmental initiatives, several guests tend to continue to evaluate hotels primarily through conventional service dimensions, as in the case of the use of smart technologies above. The results suggest that sustainability communication strategies must be more emotionally engaging and better integrated into the overall guest experience as outlined in the fourth paper.

Digital technologies continue to transform tourism experiences before, during, and after travel. The seventh paper, on Digital Tourism Experiences and E-Servicescapes, investigates the influence of e-servicescapes on user experiences within online travel platforms. The study demonstrates that e-servicescapes significantly influence flow experience, positive affect, and trust, which subsequently affect website loyalty and electronic word-of-mouth behavior. Particularly noteworthy is the moderating role of e-familiarity. Highly familiar users tend to derive fewer experiential benefits from enhanced digital environments, suggesting diminishing returns associated with digital interface improvements. This study advances sustainable tourism research by recognizing the growing importance of digital tourism ecosystems. As tourism increasingly relies on online information search, booking systems, and virtual interactions, understanding digital experience formation becomes critical for sustainable tourism competitiveness.

The eighth paper, on Sustainability, Pricing, and Market Segmentation, investigates whether sustainability practices generate economic value within the restaurant industry. Using approximately 4.4 million consumer reviews covering nearly 39,000 restaurants, the study provides one of the largest empirical investigations of sustainability-related pricing effects in hospitality. The findings demonstrate a relatively significant relationship between sustainability and pricing. Sustainability generates positive price premiums among lower-rated restaurants but negative premiums among higher-rated establishments. The findings point out that sustainability functions as a quality signal in lower-quality market segments but becomes an expected baseline feature in premium segments. This study contributes significantly to ongoing debates concerning the business case for sustainability. The findings demonstrate that the economic value of sustainability is context-dependent and influenced by market positioning, consumer expectations, and perceived quality levels. Consequently, sustainability strategies need to be customized to specific market segments rather than applied uniformly. Pricing in relation to sustainability is also investigated in the following paper (ninth) of the Special Issue.

The final paper, on illusion of control and sustainable consumption, introduces a novel psychological paradigm to sustainable tourism research by examining a psychological state called illusion of control caused by decisional control. Specifically, the authors investigate whether hotel guests’ food consumption behaviors and evaluations of sustainable initiatives differ when these practices are framed as autonomous, voluntary choices rather than imposed, structural practices. The results of the study show that sustainable consumption behaviors positively influence perceived value, visitor satisfaction, and subsequent behavioral intentions [5]. More importantly, these relationships are significantly moderated and strengthened by decisional control. In other words, when guests perceive themselves as active agents in sustainability-related decisions, their psychological investment increases. This sense of agency directly translates into financial behavior, as guests demonstrate a significantly higher willingness to pay a premium for sustainable hospitality experiences when they are granted the autonomy to choose them. Ultimately, this study makes a vital conceptual contribution by extending sustainable tourism scholarship beyond traditional environmental and managerial frameworks. By highlighting how decisional control triggers an illusion of control, the paper underscores the critical roles of psychological ownership, involvement, commitment, and value co-creation. The managerial implications are clear: sustainable tourism initiatives are profoundly more effective—and economically viable—when tourists are actively engaged in making choices as decision-makers rather than treated as passive recipients of prescriptive sustainability practices.

Several overarching themes tend to emerge across the nine papers included in this Special Issue. First, sustainability is increasingly recognized as a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing environmental, social, cultural, technological, and psychological dimensions. The studies collectively demonstrate that sustainable tourism cannot be understood solely through environmental indicators. Second, tourist perceptions and experiences remain central to sustainable tourism success. Whether examining smart hotels, cultural heritage destinations, sustainable restaurants, or sustainability-certified hotels, the studies consistently emphasize the importance of understanding tourists’/guests’ perspectives.

Third, technology plays an increasingly important role in shaping sustainable tourism experiences. Smart hotel technologies, online travel platforms, sustainability communication systems, online reviews, and digital servicescapes all influence tourist decision-making and satisfaction. Fourth, several studies highlight the importance of psychological mechanisms. Particularly, it was demonstrated that illusion of control, a state caused by decisional control, may increase tourists’ liking and involvement with the sustainability practices. Finally, the studies demonstrate the growing methodological sophistication of tourism research. Researchers employ online review analysis, sentiment analysis, text mining, eye-tracking technology, structural equation modeling, grounded theory, and large-scale data analytics to investigate increasingly complex tourism phenomena.

Although the contributions presented in this Special Issue advance our understanding of sustainable tourism, several important research opportunities remain. First, future research should further investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying sustainable tourist behavior. Concepts such as psychological ownership, perceived responsibility, moral emotions, self-determination, and behavioral nudges warrant greater attention. As in the case of illusion of control, other psychological theories and concepts such as the service recovery paradox, sunk-cost fallacy, Dunning Kruger Effect, and other cognitive biases may be investigated in relation with sustainability practices in tourism. Concepts such as cultural identity, cross-cultural differences [5], experiential value, trust [6], positive affect, ecological awareness, and illusion of control emerge as critical factors influencing sustainable tourism behaviors. Second, more longitudinal research is needed to understand how sustainability perceptions evolve over time. Most existing studies rely on cross-sectional designs, limiting our understanding of dynamic behavioral processes. Third, the interaction between artificial intelligence, smart tourism technologies, and sustainability deserves increased scholarly attention. Emerging technologies will likely reshape tourist experiences and sustainability management in unprecedented ways. Fourth, future studies can be recommended to explore cross-cultural differences in sustainability perceptions and behaviors. As tourism becomes increasingly globalized, understanding cultural variations becomes essential for effective sustainability strategies. Fifth, researchers are recommended to continue exploring innovative methodologies, including the use of psychophysiological tools/neuromarketing techniques other than eye-tracking [7], the use of influencers [8], big data analytics, machine learning approaches, and experimental designs. Such methods can provide deeper insights into tourist decision-making processes. Finally, future research may adopt more integrative frameworks linking environmental sustainability, social sustainability, economic sustainability, and tourist well-being. A holistic understanding of sustainability remains necessary for addressing the complex challenges facing tourism destinations worldwide.

The papers included in this Special Issue demonstrate the richness, diversity, and continuing evolution of research on tourist satisfaction, sustainability, and sustainable tourism development. Collectively, the studies advance theoretical understanding while offering practical recommendations for tourism and hospitality businesses, destination managers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. The Special Issue illustrates that sustainable tourism development depends not only on environmental protection but also on technology management, cultural preservation, effective communication, consumer psychology, service quality, and visitor engagement. By integrating these diverse perspectives, the contributions provide valuable insights into how tourism destinations and businesses may achieve sustainability while simultaneously enhancing tourist satisfaction. It is hoped that the findings presented in this Special Issue will stimulate further scholarly inquiry and encourage researchers to explore the many unanswered questions that remain at the intersection of sustainability, tourist satisfaction, and sustainable tourism development. As tourism and hospitality continue to evolve in response to environmental challenges, technological innovation, and changing consumer expectations, research in this field is expected to remain both timely and essential.