Sustainability in Tourism and Hospitality Degrees: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Sustainability has been of greater concern in all industry sectors, specifically in hospitality and tourism, which highlight the need for skills in sustainability in the sector. Therefore, higher education institutions must consider this concern of industry and incorporate this topic in hospitality and tourism curriculums. This paper makes a systematic literature review on sustainability topics included in hospitality and tourism curriculum of higher education courses. It was analysed 48 papers indexed on Web of Science database that discussed the presence and/or requirement for sustainability topics in higher education curriculums. This study shows that the first study on this topic only started in 2015 and emphasizes that only in the last two years it has been of greater concern by researchers, but still needing to be more carefully addressed by higher education institutions to effectively include sustainability topics in hospitality and tourism curriculums. Moreover, more research is needed to push higher education curriculums in hospitality and tourism to fully address the topic of sustainability and well prepare the future professionals of the sector.