Circular Practices in Five-Star and Boutique Hotels Through Organizational Capacity and Perceived Service Visibility

Circular economy (CE) expectations do not translate uniformly into hotel operations. This study examines how hotel decision-makers describe the organizational conditions through which sustainability expectations become circular practices and where they perceive limits to implementation. A comparative qualitative design draws on 13 semi-structured online interviews conducted in January–February 2026 across five Turkish provinces in two configurations: five-star hotels represented by seven professional managers and boutique hotels represented by six owner-managers. Interviews asked about everyday operational practices, which the authors subsequently mapped onto CE strategies. Two coders applied a shared codebook, and current practices, participant perceptions, and future proposals were analyzed separately. Participants in the professional-manager configuration reported formalized circularity, in which maintenance, durable procurement, reuse, and group transfers were embedded in roles and routines. In the owner-manager configuration, two core cases suggested a preliminary form of frugal circularity based on direct owner control and cost-driven extension of textile life; evidence was partial or limited in the other four. Managers also described a perceived service-visibility boundary: they expected repair and reuse to be acceptable to guests only when these did not signal wear. The study contributes an interpretive framework linking institutional expectations, organizational arrangements, and managers’ perceptions of market boundaries.