Literature Review of Renewable Energy in the Tourism Industry
Literature Review of Renewable Energy in the Tourism Industry

Summary/Abstract: The increasing importance of renewable energy in the service sector - and specifically in the tourism industry - has developed into a new research topic. Renewable energy, of course, plays a significant role in tourism, in many respects, and especially in relation to such matters as energy efficiency, sustainability and cost reduction. To date, however, no systematically collated review of the literature dealing with the topic has appeared, and so this study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by means of a content analysis of the research publications focusing on the use of renewable energy in the tourism industry. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, our study identifies what is known about renewable energy in the service sector in general and in the tourism industry in particular, although it is clear from this that research into renewable energy in tourism is still at an early stage. The aim of our study, therefore, is a better insight into the role of renewable energy in tourism, mainly by examining accommodation and focusing on destinations. There are examples of “best practice” from a variety of destinations which show the potential for renewable energy in the sector. Nevertheless, there is a need for more work on the influence and impact of renewable energy on all features of tourism to convince the industry to develop its use still further. We hope that this article will both stimulate tourism researchers to delve more deeply into renewable energy and motivate colleagues already involved in renewable energy to direct more attention to tourism. We hope also that the system-based approach of our study will open more doors to renewable energy research and so help the world’s fastest-growing service industry, to progress even further. This, in turn, should support the basic principle of sustainability.

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