ABSTRACT

Despite being classified as a service sector, producing immaterial services, tourism relies on huge quantities and flows of exhaustible natural resources and largely reflects a linear take-make-dispose production model. In recent years, the concept of the circular economy (CE) and its restorative and regenerative principles for production and consumption, has attracted growing attention among businesses, policy makers and researchers. While the concept of sustainability increasingly is applied in tourism research, the implications of CE in tourism have not received much attention. This paper argues that CE offers great potentials as an integrative and instructive framework for encouraging more sustainable tourism practices. It introduces, theoretically, CE in a broader socio-technical transition perspective, explores tourism as the specific context for application and provides an empirical example of a Danish hotel, inspired by a pragmatic circular business model. The paper also argues that tourism, due to its close host–guest relationships, potentially holds transformative potentials beyond how CE has been used in other fields. The paper thereby contributes to research debates about the transformative power of tourism.

摘要

尽管被归类为服务部门，提供非物质服务，但旅游业依赖于大量和流动的可耗尽自然资源，在很大程度上反映了线性的“拿-制造-处置”生产模式。近年来，循环经济 (CE) 的概念及其对生产和消费的恢复性和再生性原则越来越受到企业、政策制定者和研究人员的关注。虽然可持续性的概念越来越多地应用于旅游研究，但 CE 在旅游中的影响​​并未受到太多关注。本文认为，CE 作为鼓励更可持续的旅游实践的综合性和指导性框架提供了巨大的潜力。从理论上讲，它从更广泛的社会技术转型角度介绍了 CE，探索旅游作为应用的特定背景，并提供了一个丹麦酒店的实证例子，灵感来自务实的循环商业模式。该论文还认为，由于其密切的主客关系，旅游业可能具有超越 CE 在其他领域使用方式的变革潜力。因此，该论文有助于关于旅游业变革力量的研究辩论。