The tourism and hospitality sector in Saudi Arabia is undergoing rapid sustainability transformation under the strategic direction of Vision 2030. This study examines the maturity of Sustainability Actions (SAs), their key drivers, and implementation barriers, comparing the perceptions of industry practitioners and academic experts. Using a qualitative abductive research design based on 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with industry and academic experts in Saudi Arabia, followed by thematic analysis using a machine learning Qualcoder 3.7 software, the findings reveal both convergence and divergence between the two groups. While both recognize Vision 2030 as the primary catalyst and acknowledge financial costs and knowledge gaps as major barriers, industry experts emphasize operational efficiency and short-term performance outcomes, whereas academics advocate systemic transformation grounded in circular economy principles and long-term socio-ecological regeneration. The results demonstrate that sustainability adoption in Saudi Arabia is shaped not only by market demand but also by a strong government-led institutional framework that accelerates sectoral change. The findings are structured across environmental, social, and economic sustainability dimensions, offering differentiated implications for industry practitioners and academic stakeholders within emerging tourism economies. The study contributes to sustainability and tourism and hospitality literature by offering a comparative multi-perspective analysis and by conceptualizing sustainability transition as a hybrid model combining policy direction, market incentives, and knowledge collaboration. Managerially, the findings highlight the need for regulatory clarity, targeted financial mechanisms, capacity building, and stronger industry–academia integration to institutionalize sustainability practices in emerging tourism economies.

The current paper concerns the interplay of the circular economy (CE) and global energy threats facing the hospitality industry. Despite the growing emphasis on CE implementation within sustainable hospitality, little empirical evidence explains how CE practices enhance hotels’ green energy resilience amid escalating global energy threats and resource uncertainty, particularly in emerging markets. Addressing this research gap, this paper investigates how the 6R CE model (Redesign, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, and Rethink) strengthens green energy resilience in sustainable hotels while examining the moderating roles of policy clarity and regulations together with the influences of stakeholder collaboration and management commitment within the Saudi Arabian hospitality sector. The study adopted a four-wave temporally separated quantitative survey design, collecting data from 360 managers working in Saudi sustainable hotels across four time intervals. The proposed conceptual model was evaluated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), complemented by mediation and moderation analyses. The findings demonstrate that global energy threats strongly stimulate CE adoption (β = 0.848, p < 0.001), while CE practices substantially improve green energy resilience (β = 0.719, p < 0.001). The results further reveal a strong indirect effect through the Strength of CE Implementation (β = 0.813, p < 0.001), highlighting implementation maturity as a critical mechanism through which circular initiatives translate into resilience outcomes. The proposed model explained 55% of the variance in CE implementation and demonstrated substantial predictive capability for energy resilience. Policy clarity and regulations significantly strengthen the CE–resilience relationship, while stakeholder collaboration and management commitment further enhance these relationships. The results further identify the 6R circularity framework as an effective strategic pathway through which sustainable hotels can mitigate global energy threats while enhancing organizational resilience. This study contributes to the CE and sustainable hospitality literature by providing one of the first empirical models linking CE implementation with green energy resilience under conditions of global energy uncertainty, offering actionable implications for policymakers, hotel managers, and the implementation of Saudi Vision 2030.

This study examines the effects of economic growth and energy consumption on environmental degradation in nine Southeast Asian countries from 1990 to 2022. By jointly employing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and the ecological footprint (EFP) within both symmetric and asymmetric panel ARDL frameworks, the study provides a more comprehensive assessment of environmental sustainability than previous studies that rely on a single environmental indicator or a linear specification. The empirical results indicate that economic growth and energy consumption remain key drivers of environmental degradation, although their effects vary with the environmental indicator used. Both the panel ARDL and NARDL estimates support the EKC hypothesis when environmental degradation is measured by CO₂ emissions, but reject it when the EFP is used, highlighting the importance of adopting multidimensional measures of environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the panel NARDL results reveal significant long-run asymmetric effects of energy consumption, with increases in energy use exerting stronger adverse impacts on both CO₂ emissions and the EFP than equivalent decreases. These contrasting findings suggest that improvements in carbon efficiency associated with economic growth do not necessarily alleviate broader pressures on natural resources and ecological systems. The robustness of the results is confirmed using FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR estimators, while the causality analysis identifies long-run bidirectional relationships among economic growth, energy consumption, and environmental degradation. These findings emphasize the need for integrated policy measures that promote renewable energy adoption, cleaner industrial development, improved energy efficiency, and stronger environmental governance to support sustainable economic growth and accelerate the transition toward net-zero emissions in Southeast Asia.