Sustainable Luxury: oxymoron or comfortable bedfellows

Abstract

The following paper examines the complex relationship that exists between the concepts of luxury and sustainability in the accommodation sector. A review of the literature on luxury consumption, luxury tourism and sustainability indicated considerable debate about linking luxury and sustainability. The emergence of concepts like ‘intelligent’ and ‘sustainable’ luxury raises a number of research questions, especially in terms of understanding consumer motivations and evaluations of luxury and sustainable experiences. This paper reports on a qualitative analysis of accommodation reviews mined from the World Wide Web and examined using Leximancer. The analysis produced a number of concept maps linking luxury with other accommodation features. Overall the results did not support a strong link between luxury tourism and sustainability. The paper concludes with some issues facing the longer term sustainability of luxury tourism experiences.