Sustainability in hospitality education: research trends and future directions

Purpose - Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is a method intended to create awareness, knowledge, competence and attitude amongst stakeholders towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through higher education curricula. This bibliometric analysis, coupled with a systematic review, presents a comprehensive and objective assessment of the evolution of Sustainability in Hospitality Education (SHE) literature.Design/methodology/approach - This study integrated two review techniques: a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed scientific articles published in journals indexed in Scopus. This study discloses the research landscape and thematic evaluation of the structure of existing literature on SHE.Findings - The results show that SHE is an emerging field comprised of five main themes. The themes that emerged were SHE and perspectives, sustainability and curriculum, implications of sustainability education (SE), sustainability and learning and sustainability, students' perception and literacy.The authors' study findings also revealed that SHE is imbalanced and scarce in developing countries.Practical implications - This systematic review, integrated with a bibliometric analysis, indicates that SHE is an emerging field. The findings offer a broadened perspective on scholarly research on the concept, current trends and future research direction.Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first study that attempts to uncover various research themes of SHE literature. The authors' work also acts as an entry point for critical conceptual ideas and empirical discoveries of SHE research. The study findings are helpful for future researchers in the SHE domain.