Sustainable Hospitality Excellence: Cultivating Environmental Stewardship in Turkish Hotels Through Cultural Heritage Integration, Climate Resilience and Guest Engagement

The purpose of this study was to develop and test an integrative model of sustainable hospitality in the Turkish hotel sector by combining environmental management with cultural heritage preservation, climate resilience and certification practices. The mediating roles of employee engagement and guest participation, as well as the moderating influence of location type and regulatory support, were inspected. To empirically test the model, survey data were gathered from 58 hotels, including the perspectives of managers, employees and guests. The dataset was analyzed using structural equation modeling to capture the direct, indirect and mediating effects among the studied variables. The findings reveal that the integration of cultural heritage values, the adoption of climate resilience practices and higher levels of sustainability certification collectively exert a positive influence on hotels’ environmental performance. Employee engagement in sustainability was found to mediate the effects of cultural heritage integration and certification. Guest awareness and involvement were observed to mediate the impact of climate resilience practices and location type and regulatory environment shape these relationships. In this perspective, coastal areas and regions characterized by supportive policy frameworks demonstrated more obvious effects.