ABSTRACT

The circular economy is gaining momentum in corporate circles and European economic policies. However, its relevance and applicability to service dominated industries, such as tourism and hospitality, is poorly researched. This study investigates Scandinavian hotel operators’ understanding of the circular economy, its drivers, enablers, barriers, and value creation potential. This exploratory study gathers feedback from ten Scandinavian hotel chains managers and proposes a circular economy applicability framework to test the concept’s relevance to hotel operators. The research findings highlight respondents’ interest and expose introductory to intermediate level of understanding of the circular economy. Conditional to specific enabling levers, the research confirms the applicability and value creation potential of the circular economy to hotel operators. The research provides hotel operators with recommendations on circular economy value creation opportunities, deployment pathways and suggests future research directions.

摘要

循环经济正在企业界和欧洲经济政策中获得动力。然而，其与服务主导行业（如旅游和酒店业）的相关性和适用性的研究很少。本研究调查了斯堪的纳维亚酒店运营商对循环经济、其驱动因素、推动因素、障碍和价值创造潜力的理解。这项探索性研究收集了十位斯堪的纳维亚连锁酒店经理的反馈，并提出了一个循环经济适用性框架来测试该概念与酒店运营商的相关性。研究结果突出了受访者的兴趣，并介绍了对循环经济的中级理解。以特定的使能杠杆为条件，该研究证实了循环经济对酒店运营商的适用性和价值创造潜力。该研究为酒店运营商提供了关于循环经济价值创造机会、部署途径的建议，并提出了未来的研究方向。