Sustainability Indicators in the Hotel Industry: A Systematic Review and Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis

The hotel industry is an important sector for the economic development of many countries. While the positive effect is reflected in increased revenue, it often negatively affects the environment due to resource consumption and waste and emissions production. Additionally, it can cause social problems such as social exclusion, cultural distortion, and damage to material and immaterial heritage. Currently, the hotel industry seeks to minimize these effects by applying sustainable indicators; however, the diversity of indicators and the lack of a universally accepted indicator list make it difficult to determine which are appropriate for the hotel industry under current conditions. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify sustainability indicators that have been applied by the hotel industry during the period 2016-2021 to facilitate their identification, grouping, and delimitation for future research. To this end, a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA 2020 statement was conducted, resulting in the identification of scientific articles reporting sustainability indicators, which were subsequently grouped into the following categories: Environmental, Social, Economic, Political, Cultural and Technological. Subsequently, a multi-criteria decision-making method was applied to identify the most commonly used indicators in the hotel industry, resulting in an updated list that ranks the indicators from best to worst rated.