Towards a definition of Circular Tourism: A literature review

The growth of the tourism industry has caused rising sustainability-related issues, and, as a consequence, the need to move towards a tourism that is sustainable has become ever-more crucial. With a view towards sustainability, the transition to-wards a Circular Economy has become one of the priorities of the European Un-ion. In this context, although some analyses of incorporating the concept of Circu-lar Economy can be found in the framework of the service industries in general, the tourism industry appears to have been poorly tackled with. For this reason, this paper aims at providing some insight towards a definition of the concept of Circu-lar Tourism. The findings demonstrate that the scientific literature has provided so far with limited ideas and thoughts with regard to a possible definition as well as to possible ways of describing it adequately. Future developments will include the adoption of a definition of the concept as well as the promotion of sustainable tourism via the identification of life cycle indicators to be used by future tourists in online accommodation booking platforms.