Barriers to integrating sustainability in hospitality education: insights from Australian academia

Although Sustainability Education (SE) is widely recognised as a priority across higher education, hospitality programmes often struggle to implement SE in meaningful and impactful ways. Given the hospitality sector’s resource-intensive operations and significant social footprint, SE is critical for fostering future leaders who can drive ethical, innovative, and transformative change. However, educators’ perspectives on how SE is integrated into hospitality curricula remain underexplored. This study addresses that gap by examining how educators perceive and interpret the integration of SE within Australian university programmes through a constructivist lens, recognising sustainability understanding as socially constructed through professional and institutional contexts. Twelve hospitality academics were recruited through convenience and snowball sampling and participated in semi-structured interviews. The data were thematically analysed using NVivo 14. Findings reveal four barriers, institutional constraints, curriculum overload with weak assessment frameworks, cultural resistance, and fragile industry–academic linkages. Leadership commitment and educator training emerged as critical enablers for advancing meaningful SE. The study concludes that hospitality curricula require stronger pedagogical innovation to move beyond tokenistic approaches. Embedding sustainability as a graduate attribute, supported by clear policies, measurable indicators, and industry–academic partnerships, is essential for systemic transformation aligned with SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).