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3 May 2026

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From Standardised Compliance to Sustainable Tourism Entrepreneurship

,
and
1
Department of Law, University of Turin, 10124 Torino, Italy
2
Faculty of Tourism and Geography, University Rovira i Virgili, 43001 Tarragona, Spain
3
Department of Economics, Society, Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, 61029 Urbino, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability2026, 18(9), 4504;https://doi.org/10.3390/su18094504
This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Resilience: Academia’s Critical Role in Education, Research, and Community Engagement
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Abstract

This paper analyses seven project deliverables from the Interreg Euro-MED “MAST” project to examine its sustainability protocol as a sociotechnical boundary object facilitating ISO 21401:2018 adoption among Mediterranean tourism SMEs. Using Science and Technology Studies (STS) and boundary object theory, we conducted qualitative content analysis (QCA) to map how the protocol translates global standards into SME roadmaps addressing implementation costs, skill gaps, and legitimacy barriers. Results reveal a tension between managerial scripting (actionable tables and KPIs) and relational openings (peer learning and stakeholder prompts). While enabling SME access to certification, the protocol risks “smart compliance” by prioritising formal verification over substantive transformation. Universities emerge as key boundary brokers, potentially translating technical standards into entrepreneurial competencies and curricula. Limited to pre-implementation project documents, the analysis identifies discursive conditions under which standardised tools could support regenerative governance. Findings suggest university–SME partnerships as promising mechanisms for aligning certification with Mediterranean socio-ecological priorities, warranting empirical testing through SME implementation studies.

1. Introduction

Sustainability has become a central reference in tourism policy, business, and academic debates, yet this factor often conceals different visions, ideologies and interests, rather than aiming to achieve a shared agenda [1,2]. In practice, sustainable tourism is increasingly framed through a “managerial ecology” that translates territorial complexity into indicators, checklists, and compliance protocols [3,4]. International standards, such as ISO 21401:2018 [5], are a perfect example of this, as they promise comparability and accountability regarding accommodation, while at the same time questioning their understanding of relational and contextual aspects. These tensions are particularly acute within the fragile socio-ecological context of the Mediterranean region [6,7].
Current academic debates are pivoting from incremental sustainability, focused on harm reduction, toward regenerative and place-based flourishing achieved through participatory relations [8,9,10].
In this context, the MAST project deliverables present significant barriers for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), including high upfront costs, skill deficits, procedural complexity, and a lack of institutional support. Traditional certifications and self-assessment tools often prove costly and are poorly studied for SMEs, focused on rigid compliance logics rather than supporting and promoting innovation. The MAST project counters these trends with a sustainability protocol and an integrated self-assessment tool specifically tailored for SME adoption. Rooted in baseline consultations and gap analyses, the protocol utilises tables to specify objectives, activities, actors, and timelines, explicitly linking ISO standards to the reality of SME contexts. The protocol part of the project was specifically developed by the Department of Economics at the University of Urbino, and by the Faculty of Tourism at the University of Primorska.
From an academic standpoint, a pivotal question emerges: how can universities transform standardised sustainability tools into entrepreneurial opportunities for Mediterranean tourism SMEs? This paper addresses this question through the analysis of the MAST protocol, examining universities’ brokerage role in translating ISO 21401 standards into SME entrepreneurial roadmaps. Specifically, utilising Science and Technology Studies (STS) and boundary object lenses [11,12,13], the study interprets the MAST protocol as a sociotechnical governance device. Furthermore, it highlights the essential role of higher education institutions in bridging the gap between scientific theory and territorial implementation, facilitating the development of integrated competence frameworks for sustainable entrepreneurship.
Thus, the four main objectives of this study are: (i) to situate the protocol within the broader landscape of standards and SME constraints, (ii) to assess how it bridges knowledge, resources, and legitimacy, (iii) to critique the limits of standardisation versus regenerative paradigms, and (iv) to assess the role of universities as knowledge brokers in sustainable entrepreneurship.
The importance of achieving these objectives lies in the “value-action gap” present in the Mediterranean tourism sector. While the need for sustainability is universally acknowledged, SMEs frequently lack the resources to implement sustainable tourism practices. By examining the MAST protocol as a boundary object and the role of higher education institutions as intermediaries, this study addresses a critical gap in how theoretical sustainability standards are translated into SME practice. Furthermore, investigating the tension between compliance and transformation, and the mitigation of certification barriers, provides a roadmap for policymakers to foster a more resilient and ‘entrepreneurial’ approach to sustainability, rather than one dictated solely by external auditing.
To achieve these objectives, an open-coding qualitative content analysis (QCA) considering the main public deliverables of the project was conducted.
The paper is structured as follows: introduction, theoretical framework, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions.

2. Theoretical Framework

The research draws on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and boundary object theory, with universities emerging as boundary brokers. It also considers the standardising effects of certifications.
STS considers sustainability transitions as reconfigurations of technologies, infrastructures, rules, cultures, and practices, and not substitutions [11,14]. A multi-level perspective encompasses landscape pressures (e.g., climate factors), regime stability (dominant tourism production and governance), and niche innovations such as ISO-tailored protocols. In tourism, ISO 21401 adoption constitutes a regime reconfiguration, representing changes in production accountability networks rather than isolated decision-making [2,6]. Standards and protocols stabilise specific problem–solution visions, embedding legitimate knowledge and practices [4,13,15]. The MAST protocol interprets the ISO 21401 considering the point of view of Mediterranean hospitality SMEs, acting as an enabler of technologies, policies and networks.
Boundary objects facilitate collaboration between different entities by maintaining a clear identity while allowing flexible interpretations [12,16]. In tourism governance, protocols and indicators provide shared vocabularies accommodating diverse interests and knowledge systems [1]. The MAST protocol acts as a boundary object by mediating between abstract ISO requirements and the local SME context, offering specific environmental, social and economic interventions recognisable to certifiers yet adaptable to specific SME contexts. In this context, universities act as brokers for epistemic translations [13,17], converting technical standards into governance and capacity-building narratives. This creates dual scripts—an infrastructural one defining roles/workflows [18,19] and a relational one focused on user-friendly feedback and knowledge negotiation.
Standards produce reality through categories and metrics that shape behaviour [3,4], while tourism labels strengthen measurement/audit logics but often sideline relational/cultural facets [20,21]. The MAST project confirms that globally aligned tools remain hard to implement for SMEs, with a shift needed from incremental mitigation toward regenerative, place-based flourishing [7,8,9,10]. In this context, higher education institutions can bridge scientific theory and territorial implementation [22], promoting sustainable entrepreneurship competencies and practices [23]. Ultimately, the MAST protocol functions as a liminal device—enabling collaborative governance when embedded in participatory networks, but risking “smart compliance” when reduced to a checklist architecture [24].

3. Materials and Methods

This study employs a qualitative research design that integrates qualitative content analysis (QCA) with interpretive policy and frame analysis [25,26]. The research investigates the MAST sustainability protocol as a sociotechnical boundary object, utilising an open-coding framework to structure the analytical process [26] (pp. 111–112).

3.1. Data Collection and Corpus

The research corpus consists of seven core deliverables (N = 7) from the Interreg Euro-MED MAST project, authored by the universities of Urbino and Primorska. These documents were selected for their representative value in describing the protocol’s architecture, SME barriers, and university-led pedagogical strategies, and included:
  • Deliverable 1.2.1 Sustainability report (D1.2.1).
  • Deliverable Guidelines for sustainability protocol and self-assessment tool (D1.3.1).
  • Deliverable 2.1.1 Consultation report of SMEs’ accommodation needs and barriers to sustainable practices (D 2.1.1).
  • Deliverable 2.2.1 Consultation report for the implementation of ISO 21401: 2018 (D 2.2.1).
  • Deliverable 2.3.1 Comparative analysis of SMEs’ accommodation needs and ISO 21401:2018 requirements (D 2.3.1).
  • Deliverable 2.4.1 Sustainability protocol for SME accommodation (D 2.4.1).
  • Deliverable 3.1.1 Market search report (D 3.1.1).

3.2. Analytical Phases

The theoretical framework informed the open-coding process. STS concepts guided initial concept identification in Phase 1, while boundary object theory supported category grouping in Phase 2. This ensured the analysis remained connected to the study’s theoretical foundations throughout all phases.
The coding procedure was executed in three distinct phases as prescribed by the open-coding framework [26]:
Phase 1: Conceptualisation. This stage involved iterative readings (three times per author) of the core texts guided by the Science and Technology Studies (STS) research questions: “How does the protocol construct sustainability governance problems? What are the roles of actors, scripts, and standards?” [26] (p. 112). Verbatim notes and initial labelling yielded 147 unique concepts, ranging from the technical organisation of roles in operational tables to qualitative aspects such as user-friendliness and feedback mechanisms.
Phase 2: Defining categories. The initial concepts were grouped based on descriptive commonalities without the imposition of explanatory theory. This led to the emergence of four provisional categories: (i) Sociotechnical Scripting (42 instances, procedural tables); (ii) Boundary Mediation (31 instances, actor translations); (iii) Standardisation Performativity (38 instances, KPIs/checklists); (iv) Regenerative Openings (36 instances, relational and learning hints).
Phase 3: Developing categories. In the final phase, the provisional categories were hierarchically refined based on frequency, cross-document linkage, and thematic salience. This refinement was supported by the theoretical lenses of strategic niche management [11] and boundary object theory [12]. The final categories can be found in full in Appendix A.
During Phase 2, initial concepts such as “LED installation timelines” (D2.4.1, p.17), “energy audit protocols” (D2.4.1, p.15), and “staff training schedules” (D1.3.1, p.22) were grouped into categories such as “Sociotechnical Scripting” based on their shared procedural character. Similarly, “university workshop feedback” (D2.1.1, p.34) and “SME-consultant translation” (D1.3.1, p.8) formed the category “Boundary Mediation” as epistemic bridging instances. These examples demonstrate how descriptive commonalities drove category formation prior to theoretical refinement in Phase 3.

3.3. Reliability and Validity

To ensure reliability and validity, the two main authors coded the full corpus independently. Disagreements were identified through side-by-side comparison of coded segments using a shared Excel matrix. For instance, Coder A classified “peer learning workshops” as Regenerative Openings, while Coder B coded it as Boundary Mediation.
A group discussion, together with the third author, was held to resolve the differences that emerged until 100% agreement was reached. This level of agreement was reached purely through discussion.
While one author participated in the MAST project, two external authors independently reviewed and resolved interpretive discrepancies. This ensured objectivity despite reliance on project internal documents.

4. Results

The qualitative content analysis conducted on the MAST project deliverables allowed for the mapping of the dynamics through which the sustainability protocol is configured and interpreted. The coding results (Table 1) reveal a multidimensional structure where technical standardisation coexists with significant potential for relational and territorial transformation. The instance frequencies used in the table indicate relative prominence in the coded corpus.
Table 1. Coding matrix of the MAST sustainability protocol.

4.1. Sociotechnical Scripting

In the fragmented institutional landscape of the Mediterranean, where tourism standards often struggle to translate across diverse national borders, the MAST protocol acts as a sociotechnical boundary object designed to create a shared language between international sustainability requirements and local SME practices.
Concerning the Sociotechnical Scripting of the protocol (28%), the analysis reveals that it functions as a roadmap specifically designed to reduce the complexity of the ISO 21401 standard for Mediterranean SMEs. The findings show that the protocol’s tripartite structure, organised into environmental, social, and economic tables, creates a comprehensive script that defines specific roles, sequential actions, and accountability mechanisms (D1.3.1). By directly addressing SME barriers such as high implementation costs, lack of specialised technical skills, and procedural uncertainty in Deliverable 2.1.1, the protocol “scripts” a simplified and clear path to sustainability, transforming abstract global certification requirements into concrete, actionable management tasks tailored to operational realities.
This scripting is necessitated by the structural divergence between large-scale corporations and Mediterranean SMEs. While the former possesses the liquidity and dedicated CSR departments to manage the abstract complexities of global ISO standards, SMEs often face resource limitation and technical staff shortages. By decomposing high-level requirements into modular, seasonal-aligned micro-tasks, the MAST protocol acts as a ‘translator’ that replaces heavy administrative burdens with operational roadmaps.
This structure both eases access to international standards and creates a sustainable sociotechnical management system by equipping SMEs with legitimate, replicable frameworks for continuous operational improvement and market positioning.
Progressing from diagnostic audits through infrastructural changes establishes clear milestones that can help mitigate paralysis and delays during the implementation phase, while building cumulative competence over time. Specific examples include energy efficiency roadmaps that start with initial audits (1–3 months), LED installations and basic retrofits (3–6 months), and advanced system optimisations (6–12 months), creating momentum through achievable, simple actions that sustain long-term engagement. This temporal structure addresses the seasonality of Mediterranean tourism operations, allowing SMEs to align sustainability interventions with low-occupancy periods for minimal business disruption. Moreover, the explicit actor role assignments—distinguishing accommodation managers, external consultants, and staff teams—clarify the different diffusion of responsibilities and promote internal capacity development. Table 2 exemplifies this protocol scripting.
Table 2. Example of MAST sustainability protocol scripting. Source: Deliverable 2.4.1, p.17.

4.2. Performativity and the Risk of Smart Compliance

Concerning the performativity of standardisation (26%), the results show a significant emphasis on measurability, manifesting through checklists, KPIs, and self-assessment simulations that serve as a legitimisation mechanism. In the Mediterranean area, where sustainability is frequently perceived as an external bureaucratic burden imposed by distant regulatory bodies, this performative grammar scripts a reality where sustainability is considered mostly as ‘compliance’—quantifiable, auditable, and verifiable—rather than as a holistic ‘transformation’ considering relational, cultural, and regenerative dimensions.
Coding instances show how environmental metrics (e.g., kWh reductions), social indicators (e.g., staff training hours), and economic benchmarks (e.g., procurement cost savings) merge into a self-referential system of verifiability.
This dimension reflects the risk of “smart compliance” [24] where the protocol risks becoming a bureaucratic instrument—a badge of green credentials deployed to appease market intermediaries, certification bodies, and eco-conscious consumers—without actually bringing substantial practices in operational practices. The market search report underscores this risk: SMEs may strategically prioritise “audit-ready” documentation and superficial KPI fulfilment—such as energy dashboards—over actual transformative practices. The performative structure thus incentivises symbolic adoption. It may also create temporal and power asymmetries: checklists impose standardised timelines that ill-fit Mediterranean SMEs’ seasonality, potentially imposing context-specific adaptations during the peak season. The coding thus exposes how standardisation’s performative nature, promising universal comparability, may end up eroding the interpretive flexibility necessary for place-based sustainability.

4.3. University Brokerage and Competence Translation

Concerning the Mediation roles (21%), the findings show that universities, within the project ecosystem, acted as boundary brokers by mediating and translating knowledge between the different sources and actors.
This brokerage role proves necessary in the Mediterranean context, which is characterised by institutional fragmentation and power asymmetries between micro-entrepreneurs and distant certification authorities.
Specifically, universities translated technical texts and procedures, such as the one from ISO 21401, using practical terms and expressions that could be understood by SME employees and owners. This brokerage specifically happened both during the creation of the protocol, and during the workshops held to validate it with SMEs, businesses, support organisations and consultants operating in the certification sector. These interventions aimed to translate abstract scientific knowledge, rooted in global standardisation logic, and granular local implementation challenges, such as adapting energy audits to seasonal occupancy patterns or aligning waste protocols, with regional supply realities.
This mediation function tried to transform the protocol’s ontology from a rigid, top-down assessment checklist into a flexible pedagogical instrument that cultivates an integrated competence framework for sustainable entrepreneurship, and attempted to balance the “smart compliance” risk.
Universities create hybrid spaces where SME practitioners, academic researchers, and regional stakeholders co-negotiate protocol interpretations, considering local knowledge (e.g., heritage preservation priorities, community sourcing networks), into ostensibly universal frameworks [12]. This mediation democratises access to sustainability expertise and positions universities as ecosystem architects, capable of evolving the protocol from static deliverables to a living infrastructure that sustains ongoing learning and adaptation [27]. Through such brokerage, academia emerges not merely as a knowledge transmitter but as a catalyst for the relational competencies essential to the implementation of sustainable tourism practices and sustainable tourism governance.

4.4. Regenerative Openings and Relational Governance

Concerning the Regenerative Openings identified in the analysis (25%), the results evidence a latent yet compelling potential for the protocol to promote “collective care” and territorial resilience, disrupting its predominant checklist orientation. These openings materialise as discursive parts, such as iterative feedback mechanisms, peer-learning invitations, and stakeholder co-creation prompts, that elevate the protocol beyond mechanistic compliance to a platform for policy advocacy and mutual accountability. Specific instances include consultation reports advocating for “territorial resilience networks” and market analyses calling for DMO–SME collaborations on heritage-aligned sustainability, where the protocol tables serve not as endpoints but as provocations for collective deliberation.
In Mediterranean contexts defined by high cultural density and ecological precarity, these ‘openings’ allow the protocol to move beyond universal technicalities to address territorially rooted issues such as seasonal resource scarcity and patrimonial preservation.
The findings suggest that when embedded in participatory processes, such as university-led living labs or regional validation workshops, the protocol facilitates the emergence of “regenerative tourism”, explicitly moving beyond harm reduction (“doing less bad”) toward the proactive enhancement of local socio-ecological systems through reciprocal care practices [8]. This manifests in subtle yet transformative shifts: waste management KPIs evolve into community composting initiatives; energy roadmaps incorporate local renewable cooperatives; social metrics expand to encompass cultural continuity indicators. These moments recast SMEs not as isolated compliance actors but as nodes in a resilience network, promoting interdependence with DMOs, civil society, and indigenous knowledge holders.
Though less dominant than Managerial scripting (28%), this dimension constitutes the protocol’s “liminal space”, a threshold where managerial grammars yield to relational ontologies, aligning the MAST project with SDG 4 (quality education via peer pedagogies), SDG 8 (decent work through dignified entrepreneurship), and SDG 11 (resilient communities via place-based governance). In Mediterranean contexts of ecological precarity and cultural density, such openings have disproportionate transformative potential: they invite protocols to metabolise local specificities—seasonal rhythms, patrimonial landscapes, migratory patterns—into globally legible yet territorially rooted sustainability narratives [28].

5. Discussion

This study interprets the MAST sustainability protocol as a sociotechnical governance device that actively scripts how sustainability is problematised and operationalised in Mediterranean tourism SMEs [3,29]. The findings show that the protocol is not a neutral aid, as it organises roles and knowledge hierarchies to stabilise a specific vision of “sustainable tourism” amid coastal ecosystem challenges [2,28]. In doing so, it adds micro-political granularity to tourism governance scholarship [1], revealing standardisation as a configuration of actor–infrastructure–territory relations via classification systems [30].
The protocol inscribes a “recipe for reality” [4] tailored to the fragmented Mediterranean market [31]. However, from the findings it clearly emerges how, while decomposing ISO 21401 into SME-governable micro-interventions helps overcome resource barriers such as costs and skills shortages [32], the protocol privileges practices that are easily tabulated and audited—thus bridging empathy gaps between firms’ sustainability motives and their real-world impacts [29,33]. This could promote “smart compliance”—performative certification of conformity over change [20,29].
Overall, in this context universities (as authors of the protocol) emerge as boundary brokers [34] enacting Mode 2 knowledge production [35] and Triple Helix dynamics [36,37]. By translating standards into tools that foster entrepreneurial competencies—such as opportunity recognition and stakeholder engagement—they configure the protocol as an entrepreneurial infrastructure [38,39]. This brokerage directly answers the paper’s question: universities transform compliance checklists into scaffolds for sustainable business innovation, turning governance devices into entrepreneurial opportunities for SMEs [29].
The protocol mediates sustainability transitions through strategic niche management: it stabilises dominant regimes while nurturing protective niches to counter low-carbon pressures [40,41,42]. However, these claims remain discursively bounded, capturing reflexive design intentions rather than actual implementation outcomes [29,43].
Findings urge configurational analyses that consider and examine how protocols script entrepreneurial possibilities, over efficacy debates, while emphasising university–SME–DMO ecologies to enable territorial experimentation [29].

6. Conclusions

This study shows how universities support sustainable entrepreneurship and local economic resilience by translating, via the MAST protocol, environmental certification requirements into specific and practical actions that SMEs can implement. Their brokerage role creates resilient local economies by linking compliance roadmaps to market opportunities and community needs, protecting tourism regions from climate shocks and overtourism [22]. The analysis of the MAST sustainability protocol shows that standardisation tools in tourism SMEs go beyond simple technical guides. They actively shape how people work together, what knowledge matters, and how decisions get made in the complex social and environmental context of the Mediterranean. The protocol analysed carefully combined ISO 21401:2018 requirements with real SME challenges, like high costs, lack of skills, and difficulty gaining trust in the market, along with practical market information. This makes it a strong “boundary object” that turns sustainability into clear, step-by-step actions [12]. Its three-part structure (environment, social, economic) gives Mediterranean SMEs a practical guide to handle global standards while creating new ideas that push against traditional tourism patterns, especially with growing problems like climate change and changing customer expectations [11,37]. However, this helpful structure has a downside: the strong focus on scripting (28%) and standardisation performance (26%, seen in KPI checklists and fixed timelines) creates a real risk of “smart compliance”. This is when companies focus on formal checks rather than real change, choosing surface-level credibility over deep environmental and social improvements [3,20,24]. This in-between quality reflects bigger challenges in Mediterranean governance, where trusted global standards need to work alongside local practices that respect culture, community connections, and hopes for regeneration [8,32].
This tension leads to clear practical recommendations. SMEs can treat the protocol’s tables not as strict lists but as flexible starting points for testing new business ideas. They can begin with simple steps like energy upgrades, then build toward bigger changes in suppliers and customer relationships. Universities play a key role as knowledge brokers: by turning technical standards into hands-on courses, mentoring, and peer workshops, they change compliance tools into systems that build sustainable business skills [22,37]. Policymakers and tourism organisations (DMOs) should place these tools in collaborative settings—using EU-style funding for joint design projects, mixed measures that combine numbers with stories, and ongoing support for university–business partnerships—that favour regenerative ideas (25%) over narrow management approaches [1,41]. This could transform the protocol from a small-scale helper into a major force for change, connecting Mediterranean tourism to UN goals like quality education (SDG 4), good jobs (SDG 8), and strong communities (SDG 11).
From a theoretical point of view, this study advances research on sustainability changes by applying Science and Technology Studies (STS) and boundary object ideas to tourism policy [11,12]. It rethinks the protocol as an active tool that shapes roles, processes, and what people see as real, sometimes locking in compliance patterns or sparking new experiments when enriched by collaboration (21%) [3,15]. This approach connects standardisation research with regenerative ideas, showing how language patterns lead to business innovation and emphasising universities’ role as key connectors in unequal power situations [8,33,34]. The paper challenges simple ideas about tool use, seeing governance tools as spaces where management control meets relational possibilities [2,27].
The study has built-in limits from its forward-looking design: based on project documents from the pilot stage, it focuses on language and tool analysis rather than long-term results in real companies, so it does not show how the scripting plays out in practice [44]. As MAST was a “study” project, set to enter the “test” phase in 2026 with MAST Plus, the early pilot stage did not allow the gathering of meaningful data for triangulation.
Future research should focus on real-world testing after implementation, using detailed studies and mixed methods to follow how SMEs move from compliance routines to regenerative business, measuring changes like mixed KPIs or active peer networks, for example. Early pilots need a quick review: feedback from SMEs using the protocol could show gaps and suggest improvements. Broader comparisons could pit MAST against non-ISO tools across European and Mediterranean areas to find what drives regeneration [40]. Collaborative action research—jointly creating “living protocols” with universities, DMOs, and business owners—would test different brokerage approaches and conditions for growing innovation toward sustainable tourism futures [30,38].

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Methodology, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Validation, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Formal analysis, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Investigation, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Resources, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Writing—riginal draft, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P.; Writing—review & editing, L.G., L.O. and G.C.P. All authors contributed equally to the research. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Data Availability Statement

The MAST project deliverables analysed by the paper can be found at the following links: D 1.2.1 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/d121_sustainability-report.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026. D 1.3.1 GUIDELINES FOR SUSTAINABILITY PROTOCOL AND SELF-ASSESSMENT TOOL https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/d.1.3.1_guidelines.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026. D 2.1.1 CONSULTATION REPORT OF SMEs ACCOMMODATION NEEDS AND BARRIERS TO SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES. https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/d.2.1.1_consultation_report_2.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026. D 2.2.1 CONSULTATION REPORT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ISO 21401: 2018. https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/d.2.2.1_consultation_report.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026. D 2.3.1 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SMES ACCOMMODATION NEEDS AND ISO 21401 REQUIREMENTS. https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/d.2.3.1_comparative_report.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026. D 2.4.1 SUSTAINABILITY PROTOCOL FOR SMES ACCOMMODATION. https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/d.2.4.1_sustainability_protocol.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026. D 3.1.1 MARKET SEARCH REPORT. https://mast.interreg-euro-med.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/mast_d.3.1.1_-marketsearchreport.pdf, accessed on 15 February 2026.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:
MASTMaking Sustainable Tourism Possible
ISOInternational Standardisation Organisation
STSScience and Technology Studies
SMESmall and Medium Enterprise
DMODestination Management Organisation
SDGSustainable Development Goal

Appendix A

Table A1. Category 1 coding instances. Source: author’s elaboration.
Table A2. Category 2 coding instances. Source: author’s elaboration.
Table A3. Category 3 coding instances. Source: author’s elaboration.
Table A4. Category 4 coding instances. Source: author’s elaboration.

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