A systematic review of sustainable and regenerative tourism practices

Sustainable tourism has been widely studied due to its potential to mitigate negative socio-environmental impacts. However, its practices have predominantly focused on impact mitigation, resource efficiency, and responsible management, while regenerative tourism has emerged with a stronger emphasis on restoring and revitalising ecological, social, cultural, and economic systems. This study conducts a systematic literature review of 107 articles to examine sustainable and regenerative tourism practices, identifying and comparing their key themes and characteristics while highlighting areas of similarity and difference between the two approaches. Despite the growing body of research on sustainable and regenerative tourism, limited attention has been given to systematically identifying and comparing the practices associated with these approaches. Documenting and comparing these practices is important for understanding how sustainability and regeneration are translated into concrete actions across different tourism and destination contexts. The results show that sustainable tourism practices emphasise efficiency, environmental management, and harm mitigation, with tourists and local communities more frequently involved in education, awareness, behavioural change, heritage, and community-oriented initiatives. These practices are mainly associated with resource efficiency, waste reduction, sustainable mobility, governance, and digitalisation, and are largely implemented or coordinated by tourism businesses and destination management organisations. Regenerative tourism practices promote restorative and transformative actions, with communities and visitors more consistently positioned as active participants in co-creation and other forms of engagement. They are more strongly oriented towards ecosystem restoration, community participation, local development, and systems thinking, reflecting a more holistic and relational approach. Some practices—such as local sourcing and consumption, waste management, low-carbon measures, and environmental conservation—are shared across both approaches. Overall, sustainable and regenerative tourism practices can be understood as complementary, offering distinct yet converging pathways towards more responsible and future-oriented tourism. The study contributes theoretically by clarifying how sustainable and regenerative tourism are operationalised through practices and by identifying where practices associated with the two approaches differ and overlap. Practically, it provides a structured evidence base to support destination managers, tourism businesses, and policymakers in translating sustainability and regeneration principles into concrete actions.