Beyond green claims: a social-ecological assessment of cruise tourism sustainability

Cruise tourism sustainability discourse prioritises vessel level innovation, marginalising destination level social ecological impacts. To address this, we develop a structured literature based conceptual model of cruise mobility as a coupled global and local social ecological system. Supported by AI assisted extraction and synthesis of multidisciplinary literature, this paper constructs a governance-oriented framework. The analysis identifies two interacting dynamics: a reinforcing expansion loop where revenues stimulate infrastructure and deepen dependency, and a degrading acceptance loop where cumulative stress erodes tolerance. Presented as heuristic formalisation devices, these loops help explain why vessel efficiency alone cannot prevent destination level degradation. We translate these findings into a five-pillar governance framework featuring capacity thresholds, social monitoring, economic diversification, power rebalancing, and multi-level coordination. This shifts attention from ship focused compliance towards destination embedded sustainability governance.