Circular Economy in Tourism and Hospitality: Analysis of Scientific Production on the Theme

Tourism is a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon that involves people's movement to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal, professional, or commercial reasons. These people are called travellers (who can be tourists or hikers, residents or non-residents) (World Tourism Organization, 2020). When moving to another city, the traveller will need to stay somewhere, usually in a hotel. The hotel can be considered an ‘own accommodation establishment that offers furnished rooms, with private bathrooms, for imminent or temporary occupation, offering full food service, and the rest, services inherent to the hotel activity’ (Castelli, 1992, p. 88).

Nowadays, more and more tourist destinations and hotel developments are concerned with social, environmental, and economic aspects, mainly from the second half of the twentieth century, as in this period, tourist activity started to increase (Almeida & Abranja, 2009), and the need to develop sustainable tourism arose. Sustainable tourism is ‘developed and maintained in an area (community and environment) in a way and on a scale that remains viable over an infinite period and does not degrade or alter the environment (physical and human) in which it exists to the degree that it prohibits successful development and well-being with other activities and processes‘ (Hanai, 2012, p. 216).

A new approach to concern with aspects related to society and the environment is the circular economy, which is an economic model based on sharing, rental, reuse, repair, reform, and recycling, in a (almost) closed cycle, which aims to maintain the most significant utility and value of products, components, and materials at all times (Bourguignon, 2017; Bartl, 2018; Sehnem et al., 2019).

From this context, this research aims to understand how the circular economy is being treated in the tourism and hospitality sectors. To this end, 18 scientific articles were analyzed, highlighting: the location of the studies carried out; the school of thought of circular economy; practices connected to the principles and types of gradations of the circular economy; the type of benefit (economic, social, or environmental) obtained; the type of methodology used in the research; the journals used for publication; and, finally, the main results of the research carried out concerning the circular economy and its relationship with tourism and hospitality.

The article is structured in the following sections: a theoretical framework with an approach to the circular economy; methodology applied in this study; analysis of the results and discussions; and conclusions.

The current economic model is transforming as more and more organizations and consumers are becoming concerned with the impacts that production and consumption have on society and the environment. The linear economy, in which the extraction of raw materials, the production of goods, distribution, consumption, and generation of waste occurs, gives way to the circular economy, which involves decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources and eliminating waste from the system in principle. Supported by a transition to renewable energy sources, the circular model builds economic, natural, and social capital (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2020). Among the different schools of thought that address the issue of the circular economy, each considers it to be a concept of a cyclical/closed system (Murray et al., 2017). Table 1 shows these schools and the main points addressed by each.

Verifying the theme from the perspective of different schools allows the theme to contribute to the insertion in different circularities of the economy, ‘either by the rein-corporation of matter in biological cycles or technical cycles, or by observing the behavior of natural cycles, that is, by the need for an economic order to reuse materials or elements in certain activities‘ (Stival et al., 2020, p. 74).

The circular economy has the following principles (Economia Circular, 2020): –

Eco-design: Consider and integrate environmental impacts throughout a product's life cycle in its design.

Another positive aspect for companies that adopt this type of strategy is the reduction of costs in the short and medium terms, profit in the offer of services of the reverse cycle (sorting of collection), and financing of new business models. Allied to that, companies can still mitigate some challenges related to reducing raw material accounts, improving customer interaction and loyalty, less product complexity, and more manageable life cycles (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013).

For consumers, the gains involve the fact that the products will last longer and will be more reusable, which would generate a significant reduction in total costs of ownership; choice and convenience increase as manufacturers can customize the duration, type of use, and product components the customer wants, replacing today's standard for a broader set of options; and secondary benefits, if the products deliver more than the primary function (for example, carpets that act as air filters or packaging that serve as fertilizers). In addition to generating value for the client, there will also be a reduction in environmental costs through a circular system (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013).

Among the industries that have been applying actions aimed at economic, environmental, and social aspects are tourism and hospitality. Thus, verifying what scholars in these areas are researching circular economy and applying it to the service sector is a way of encouraging new businesses to understand the proposal of this theme and the possibilities of putting it into practice.

This research aimed at analyzing scientific publications involving the circular economy, tourism, and hospitality. Thus, it was decided to develop descriptive research on the theme in the administration area (Hair et al., 2005). Bibliographic research was used as a research method (Gil, 2008), based on the databases’ articles. The data collection used the keyword junctions, shown in Table 2.

The data collection was based on four databases—Spell, CAPES Portal, SciELO, and Web of Science—in June 2020. In the Spell database, all the keywords mentioned in Table 3, in Portuguese, were used, and no articles were found.

In the CAPES Portal database, the ‘any containing’ action was selected in the search item, showing only peer-reviewed journals. The keywords mentioned in Table 3, in Portuguese, were used, which generated 30 results for the terms Circular Economy + Tourism. Using other keywords, no results were obtained. When analyzing the 30 articles, it was found that only two contained in the keywords of the study the terms Circular Economy + Tourism, and only one article was considered, as the other was a report.

In the SciELO database, both Portuguese and English keywords were used, generating no results.

In the Web of Science database, keywords were used in English, and the system generated 54 results for the terms Circular Economy + Tourism; 5 results for Circular Economy + Hospitality; and 2 results for Circular Business Models + Tourism. Among the Circular Economy + Hospitality articles, four were used, as one was an editorial material. The articles with Circular Business Models + Tourism were fully utilized. Circular Economy + Tourism articles, on the other hand, were evaluated, and those that were already published in journals were selected, excluding those that were presented at congresses, that were not focused on tourism, and that were repeated in the search, as was the case for three articles that also appeared in the result with the term Hotels as well as an article that appeared in the search for Circular Business Models + Tourism, totalling 11 articles. Thus, the final sample was 18 articles, described in Table 3.

Content analysis (Bardin, 2016/1977) was used to understand how the circular economy is employed in tourism and hospitality. The organization took place as proposed by the author, presented through three chronological poles: (1)

pre-analysis;

In the pre-analysis, the material was organized by selecting articles, according to the criteria presented above, in Chart 3. From the identification of the 18 articles, the material was explored with consideration of the pre-established objectives: the location of the studies carried out; the school of thought of circular economy; practices connected to the principles and types of gradations of the circular economy; the type of benefit (economic, social or environmental) obtained; the type of methodology used in the research, the journals used for publication; and, finally, the main results of the research carried out with the circular economy and its relationship with tourism and hotels.

The last stage refers to the moment of reflective and critical analysis (Bardin, 2016), presented in the discussion section.

In seeking to understand how the circular economy is applied in the tourism and hospitality sectors, 18 articles were identified. The connection between the themes is relatively recent, being the first study in 2016, and it was only from 2018 that the studies were intensified (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Most studies were carried out in European countries, with an emphasis in Spain, with four publications, and Italy, with three publications. The remaining publications represent the following countries: the Netherlands; Lithuania; the United Kingdom; Romania; a partnership between Austria, Canada, and the United States; a partnership between Canada, the United States, and Australia; Denmark; Portugal; Cuba; Australia; and a partnership between the United States and Finland.

None of the articles mentioned the beginning of circular economics. The vast majority of researchers presented the concepts of circular economy and its link to tourism and hospitality.

To the practices connected to the principles and types of gradations of the circular economy, it was possible to identify the direction that the researchers gave to this point in only seven articles. One article mentioned reduction, reuse, and recycling; one article cited recycling and reuse; one article indicated recycling; one article addressed reduction, reuse, recycling, redesign, replace, and rethink; one article focused on reducing; and two articles worked with a focus on reuse (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Concerning the types of benefits of the circular economy, nine articles discussed the benefits focused on the economic, environmental, and social aspects; six articles showed benefits for the environmental aspect; one article addressed the environmental and social benefits; one article dealt with social benefits; and one article focused on economic benefits (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Regarding the methodology used in the research, six articles carried out theoretical research; three articles carried out unique case studies; two articles applied a survey; and one article researched an extensive literature review and compared maps and databases from different years. Legal aspects of the country were also used with the subject of study; one article was based on media reports and not on peer-reviewed literature, which, in the case of tourism literature, is often reflective and generally written with the advantage of retrospect; one article carried out a bibliometric review; one article worked with a multiple-case study; one article applied the Delphi study with four rounds of interviews; one article carried out the mixed methods approach, which allowed the integration of official statistical data, field research, and interviews; and one article carried out desk research and used additional documents located on the internet (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Concerning the journals used for the publication of the research, it is emphasized that only seven articles were published in journals focused on the area of tourism and hotels. The other articles were submitted to publications of different subject areas, including sustainability, administrative sciences, and clean production.

Finally, the main research results in the circular economy and its relationship with tourism and hospitality point out that the circular economy model can be transferred/applied to tourism (Girard & Nocca, 2017). There are still few well-documented initiatives on the circular economy in the tourism industry. Therefore, this is still a poorly researched area that will inevitably deserve much more attention in the coming years (Vargas-Sánchez, 2018; Florido et al., 2019). Despite this, the tourism industry, particularly sustainable tourism, contributes to strengthening the circular economy model's assumption as a model of an economic system that facilitates the adoption of behaviours by all interested parties searching for sustainable paths (Immacolata, 2018).

In the hotel industry, the results showed that hotel chains’ main strategies, about gradations, in that order, are reduction, recycling, and reuse (Rodríguez-Antón & Alonso-Almeida, 2019). In some locations, the hotel industry is not yet sufficiently prepared to adopt the circular economy principles, as is the case in Romania, a study by Pamfilie et al. (2018).

Other studies indicate that there is a need to reduce food waste in tourism (Gatti & Indrigo, 2020); reuse water (Pérez, Delgado & Martínez, 2020); work with waste recycling alternatives at tourist destinations (Noll, Wiedenhofera, Miattob & Singh, 2019); and develop solutions that take into account the circular economic model as a self-regenerating system in which the entry of resources and waste emissions and energy losses are minimized by slowing down, closing, and reducing material loops and energy (Uche-Soria & Rodríguez-Monroy, 2019). These aspects are part of the principles of the circular economy.

In general, the evidence from the surveys carried out shows that circular economy practices are still complex and need to overcome many barriers so that tourist destinations and hotel businesses will implement actions aimed at future development (Sørensen, Bærenholdt & Greve, 2019).

The concern for future generations has become a constant among people and organizations. Therefore, thinking about the best way to use resources is in line with what the circular economy preaches. The proposal is to envision the materials in a cyclical process, enabling its trajectory for much longer, thus preserving its value (Webster, 2017).

The circular economy is an interdisciplinary field and could not be left out of tourism and hospitality. Despite being a new field of study (Vargas-Sánchez, 2018; Florido, Jacob & Payeras, 2019), research shows that the segment has been seeking to understand and apply the concept in the daily lives of hotel companies and tourist destinations. According to the survey carried out, the studies are still mostly focused on Europe. Our study presents opportunities for Brazilian researchers to expand their studies with national reality.

Due to its incipient character, studies have not dealt with the schools that originated the circular economy concept. Despite this, it is clear that the use of the concept is the essence of the circularity of the economy—that is, resources and destinations can and should be used in different ways and countless times (Murray et al., 2017), impacting as little as possible on the environment and society.

Another aspect presented in the articles is the type of circular economy degradations. It is observed that there are still few studies that address any of the nine R's proposed by Van Buren et al. (2016), but this occurrence can be inferred since it is a recent topic in the areas of tourism and hospitality and has not yet been explored in its wholeness.

Regarding the benefits of the circular economy, studies show returns in economic, social, and environmental aspects. This question is in line with what Stival et al. (2020) address. Due to the theoretical nature of the vast majority of articles researched, it appears that it is still necessary to explore and/or identify empirically the benefits generated.

It is assessed that the field is vast and can be explored with different qualitative and quantitative techniques regarding the methodologies used. Researchers are still producing theoretical research, which points to possibilities for further empirical research to ratify the circular economy concept.

As a suggestion for future studies, an analysis of the circular economy within the scope of tourism and hospitality in Brazil is proposed. Comparing practices employed in Europe and their similarities and/or difficulties to be applied at the national level. Moreover, publications occur more in journals in the fields of tourism and hospitality.