Luxury hospitality meets sustainability: crafting impactful stories on social media

Purpose Luxury is synonymous with quality, exclusivity and rarity, characteristics which do not hold sustainability as a core consideration in service provision. This study aims to investigate how luxury service brands craft stories on social media around their sustainability practices. Design/methodology/approach In-depth, semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of informants using an interview protocol informed by consultation with literature in storytelling and sustainability marketing as well as four pilot interviews with practitioners in luxury hospitality. Data collection consisted of 29 interviews with individuals from Michelin star restaurants. Transcripts were inductively analysed following Gioia’s methodology, encompassing open- and axial-coding before abductive aggregation into four distinct dimensions based on Dessart and Standaert (2023) strategic storytelling framework. Findings Twelve themes were identified across four aggregate dimensions: aim, actors, aspiration and action (Dessart and Standaert, 2023). Within the aim dimension, luxury service brands tell the stories of their sustainable systems by supporting local producers while always prioritising the quality of their products. Apart from spotlighting their restaurants as central actors in their story, participants highlight suppliers and supporting governing bodies in crafting their sustainability content narratives. The aspiration dimension tells the story of sustainability’s role in restaurants’ heritage, authenticity and service experience. Finally, the discussion centres on owned, earned and co-created content as action elements within storytelling efforts. Originality/value This study builds on previous scholarly work on effective storytelling in providing novel contributions by operationalising the strategic storytelling framework at the confluence of luxury services and sustainability, as well as managerial practice within the restaurant industry and the broader luxury brands and services contexts. This study identifies 12 distinct narrative elements across the four categories of strategic storytelling which serve to provide novel insights for theory as well as a roadmap for practitioners looking to craft their own sustainability narratives on social media platforms.