Digital Transitions for Sustainable, Circular and Regenerative Tourism in Island and Peripheral Destinations

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Introduction

Tourism destinations are facing challenges to reconcile competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience. These challenges are particularly significant in island, peripheral, and vulnerable destinations, where tourism often plays a central role in local economies while simultaneously intensifying pressures on natural resources, infrastructures, communities and social systems (Barrera-Martínez et al., 2026). In such contexts, the transition towards more sustainable tourism requires approaches that go beyond impact reduction and move towards circular, regenerative, and capable of creating social value to the host society (Leder et al., 2024). The social value of tourism is the positive environmental, economic, and sociocultural impacts on the host society (Chim-Miki et al., 2025). Technology can help destinations to create products and services that can improve the tourism experience (Buhalis et al., 2026), and reduce the impact on the territory, such as eco-innovations, immersive or phygital experiences. Also, digital transition and data-driven approaches are becoming increasingly relevant to the destination's transformation. Digital platforms, smart destination tools, tourism observatories, sustainability dashboards, artificial intelligence, geospatial data, digital twins, blockchain, sensor-based monitoring, and decision-support systems can support new ways of designing, managing, and assessing society-centric tourism development (Alonso-Muñoz et al., 2025). However, technology alone does not guarantee more sustainable outcomes. Its contribution depends on how it is embedded in business models, governance arrangements, interorganizational networks, community participation, and policy processes. Academic research has made advances in sustainable tourism, smart tourism destinations, the circular economy, and destination resilience. Nevertheless, these areas remain insufficiently integrated, particularly in relation to vulnerable territories such as islands, peripheral regions, small destinations, and tourism-dependent communities (Barrera-Martínez et al., 2026). There is still limited understanding of how digital transition can enable circular and regenerative tourism practices, how stakeholders collaborate to support green and digital transitions, and how evidence-based policymaking can improve sustainability outcomes at the destination level.

This special issue, therefore, aims to provide a platform for scholars to examine how digital transitions can support sustainable, circular, and regenerative tourism in islands, peripheral, and vulnerable destinations. It seeks contributions that move beyond technology-centered perspectives and analyze digitalization as an enabler of organizational change, territorial governance, circular business models, regenerative practices, social value creation, and sustainability-oriented decision-making. The theme differs from generic calls on technology by positioning technology as an enabler of sustainable and regenerative transformation, rather than as the central object of analysis. It is also aligned with European and international agendas on the green and digital transition, sustainable competitiveness, destination resilience, and evidence-based policymaking.

This special issue is methodologically inclusive, as it can accept quantitative and qualitative studies, case studies, comparative destination research, conceptual papers, policy-oriented contributions, and practice-based research. Contributions from different countries are encouraged as long as they focus on Islands, peripheral, or vulnerable destinations.

List of Topic Areas

Topics of interest for the special issue are included, but are not limited to:

• Circular and regenerative tourism business models
• Networks and inter-organizational collaboration for circularity
• Sustainable and regenerative destination management
• Multi-stakeholder governance in island and peripheral destinations
• Smart islands and smart peripheral destinations
• Tourism observatories, big data and sustainability indicators
• ESG indicators and sustainability dashboards for tourism destinations
• Data governance, interoperability and evidence-based policymaking
• Community impacts, social value and inclusion in tourism
• Resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity in tourism systems
• Sustainable accommodation and circular hospitality practices
• New forms of tourism competitiveness
• Impact assessment of circular, regenerative and smart tourism initiatives
• Technology and digital transition to enable circular and regenerative tourism practices within destinations.

Guest Editors 

Adriana Fumi Chim-Miki, University of the Azores, Portugal and Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil. [email protected]

Flavio Borges-Tiago,  University of the Azores, Portugal. [email protected]

Jin Hooi Chan,  University of Greenwich, United Kingdom. [email protected] 

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

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Author Guidelines

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”. Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 30th July 2026

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 30th November 2026

Closing date for abstract submission: 31st August 2026

Email for submissions: [email protected]