Sustainable development goals and tourism organisations: The enabling role of sustainable business models

<p>The sustainable tourism represents one of the main emerging transformation that have interested Tourism&Hospitality. During the last years, a large number of tourism organizations started to integrate their offers sustainable principles in order to engage more effectively with their stakeholders. Furthermore, policy makers favored this paradigm shift through their initiatives due to the need to rethink the global economy. The comprehension of the tourism’s contributions to the sustainable development represents a complex activity due to the impacts caused by tourism organizations on the society. In fact, prior studies agreed about the existence of criticisms that negatively impact on the development of sustainable destinations. However, a wide number of academics started to discuss about the enabling role covered by sport tourism, which represents a form of sustainable tourism characterized by several positive impacts. In particular, one of the main research area identified by academics and policy makers is represented by the bike tourism, which represents an activity characterized by a high degree of interlinkages between environmental, social and economic dimensions. According to this evidence, the chapter aims to evaluate through the theoretical framework proposed by Joyce and Paquin (2016), the contribution of bike tourism to sustainable development.</p>