The adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set the strategic vision for the next decade. Yet, their operationalisation, more so, at the tourism industry and destination level is fraught with challenges leaving destination managers and tourism officials to appeal for meaningful and effective decision support tools. This paper addresses the academic and institutional recommendations for monitoring and implementing the SDGs in the tourism sector. It introduces a systems thinking framework (the Tourism Sustainability Assessment Framework (TSAF)) for delineating the dependencies and dynamics of variables and monitoring indicators in a tourism industry versus tourism destination ecosystem of relationships. The TSAF proposes a roadmap for integrating information and data from the various nationally adopted tourism statistics frameworks to effectuate the assessment of tourism sustainability. A comparison along with the SDG indicators then accentuates the importance and necessity for industry-specific, effective units of measurement.

Customer co-creation feeds from customer engagement, value recognition and experience appreciation. Tourists participation in the image communication of a destination in adversity is well documented along literature addressing their motivations and their reliability as information intelligence. What remains still vague is an exploration of the above dynamics in the case of destinations in sustained crisis hence the customer predispositions for destinations under an extended duration yet reduced intensity turbulent destination image. Using Lesvos (Greece) as a case study of a destination affected by refugee and immigrant mobilities since 2012, this paper explores those constructs affecting tourists’ response and engagement in the formulation, promotion and hence co-creation of an affected destinations’ cognitive and affective image. The theoretical contribution of the paper lies in the exploration of the conscious and unconscious tourist triggers that could promote the co-repair and co-restoration of a long-affected destination’ image, with direct managerial implications both for destination and crisis management.

Within the globalized tourism market, tourism destinations have the option to turn to sustainability as a conceptual and management framework for their unique branding and identity proposition. This research highlights the importance and utility of sustainability branding that stems from clustering tourism destinations based on the similarities of their tourism performance attributes. The study builds on secondary data from 11 coastal destinations in 8 Mediterranean countries. The analysis leads to the formulation of three main sets of evaluation indicators: (a) environmental footprint; (b) destination dependency on tourism; and (c) locals’ prosperity, incorporating elements of social and psychological carrying capacity. Findings identify three to four distinct destination clusters based mainly on the attributes of destinations’ cultural and natural attributes, seasonality of supply, typology of prevailing accommodation and tourist profile. From a theoretical perspective, the research identifies key clustering attributes of sustainable destinations that could inform management interventions around destination branding and competitive sustainability performance positioning.

The paper explores the predisposition of domestic and international urban tourists of Athens, Greece, to pay an app‐calculated green levy based on the carbon footprint (CF) of their hotel stay. The study employs fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the complex configurations between the effects of the sustainable hotel profile, disposable income for tourism, digital literacy, knowledge around CF, and environmental behavior during hotel stay on guests' willingness to pay for the technology‐calculated green levy appropriated to their individual behavior. fsQCA produced three sufficient pathways, namely, pragmatistic, environmental conscious, and opportunistic, as plausible customer profiles. Findings are compared against other dominant correlational modes of analysis to highlight the underlying complexity of tourist behavior and hence the need for the application for non‐parametric methods of analysis. The theoretical contribution of the paper lies in the integration of the concepts of digital literacy, environmental awareness, and behavior‐based levies. Technology‐enabled and self‐controlled tools can support transparent and appropriated green levies and promote ownership of carbon offsetting in the hospitality industry.