The hospitality industry faces the challenge of balancing growth with environmental responsibility. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of sustainable practices in green hotels by reviewing 394 scholarly publications from 2014 to 2024. It systematically maps major trends and themes in sustainable hotel research. Using the Bibliometric R package and VOS viewer, the analysis reveals a 17.04% annual growth in academic output, with international collaboration contributing to 36.29% of publications, spanning 128 sources. These findings highlight the growing academic interest in green hotels, as evidenced by the increase in publications and collaborative efforts. Where major focus has been given on energy and water conservation, waste reduction, and eco-certification. Moreover, research frameworks such as the “theory of planned behaviour” and “value-belief-norm” are widely applied in such studies. Common keywords, such as “green hotels”, “sustainability”, “consumer behaviour”, and “environmental concern”, reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Consumer behaviour emerged organically during the keyword co-occurrence analysis, indicating growing academic attention toward guest perceptions and behavioural aspects remains a key factor driving sustainable hospitality research. Among the co-cited references, Ajzen (Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 50: 179–211, 1991) and the “theory of planned behaviour” stand out as the most influential and structurally central studies. The co-citation structure suggests that green hotel scholarship is theoretically grounded in behavioural intention models. For scholars, research on green hotels presents opportunities to explore the broader impacts of sustainable hospitality. Our study provides a comprehensive framework by showcasing how green hospitality research streams like “consumer behaviour, environmental management, and sustainable marketing” overlap and diverge over time. It provides direction for future research on green practices and tourism factors.
Sahu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.