Tourism and hospitality employees in climate action: enabling interventions and future research avenues

Purpose Tourism and hospitality generate and face risks that undermine the climate and significantly impact employees’ careers and health, exacerbating their existing economic vulnerability. Despite their precarious situation, these employees can play a pivotal role as active contributors to climate action, contributing to saving the planet, sustaining the sector, ensuring its future and improving their circumstances as long as their challenges are recognized and appropriate interventions are implemented. However, employees and what enables or triggers their contribution have often been overlooked due to the predominant focus on tourists’ behaviors. This viewpoint aims to bring attention to this oversight, focusing on how to enhance employees’ contributions to climate action while mitigating their vulnerability. Design/methodology/approach This study is a viewpoint. It is based on the authors’ opinions and experiences, supported by both gray and academic literature. Findings At the moment, there is more emphasis on how tourists’ behaviors can reduce the contribution of tourism and hospitality to climate change rather than on how employees can mitigate climate change through their work. Climate change has adverse consequences for employees’ careers and health, which can be alleviated through heightened involvement in climate action. Though highly vulnerable, employees can play a crucial role in advancing climate action when their challenges are properly addressed. Interventions such as enhancing engagement, upskilling and fostering a sense of purpose are essential to empowering meaningful employee participation. Ultimately, climate initiatives are more effective when employees are recognized not as passive actors but as active contributors to sustainability. Practical implications This viewpoint highlights that employees are a key organizational capability through which tourism and hospitality organizations can reduce their impact on climate change. It informs managers, HR professionals and policymakers on actions to enhance employees’ contributions to climate action. Originality/value This viewpoint offers a novel perspective by shifting the predominant focus on tourists to employees in tourism and hospitality, highlighting their dual role as both vulnerable to climate change and potential agents of change. It discusses how climate-related risks threaten employees’ careers and health, and how strategic organizational support, particularly through a human resource management perspective, can empower their role in advancing climate action. By reframing the discussion, it expands the sustainability discourse in the industry and highlights the importance of employee-centered approaches often overlooked in current literature.