SUSTAINABILITY OF TOUR OPERATORS IN AN EMERGING TOURISM DESTINATION: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM MONGOLIA

Abstract

Sustainable tourism has emerged as a central priority in the management of tourism enterprises, particularly in developing and emerging destinations characterised by institutional fragility, infrastructure constraints, and evolving regulatory environments. Tour operators occupy a strategically important intermediary role within tourism systems, coordinating transport, accommodation, and visitor experiences while shaping the economic, environmental, and social impacts of tourism at the destination level. Despite their significance, firm-level sustainability among tour operators in emerging destinations remains comparatively underexplored in the empirical literature. This study addresses this gap by examining the internal and external determinants of sustainable operations among tour operators in Mongolia, a nature-based emerging tourism destination facing pronounced sustainability challenges. Drawing on quantitative survey data collected from 78 registered tour operator firms, the study applies reliability analysis, Pearson correlation, and multiple linear regression to test five hypothesised relationships. The findings demonstrate that management capacity (β = 0.42, p < 0.001) and environmental responsibility (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) are the strongest and most statistically significant predictors of sustainability performance, while social engagement with local communities also exerts a positive and significant influence (β = 0.19, p < 0.05). In contrast, human resource capacity and public policy and infrastructure support exhibit positive but statistically non-significant effects, suggesting that external institutional conditions play a comparatively limited role in shaping sustainability outcomes at the firm level. The overall regression model is statistically significant (F(5, 72) = 22.41, p < 0.001) and explains 61% of the variance in sustainability performance (R² = 0.61). These results indicate that tour operators in emerging tourism destinations rely primarily on internal organisational capacities to address sustainability challenges, often compensating for institutional constraints through managerial initiative and adaptive practices. The study contributes firm-level empirical evidence from an under-researched Central Asian context and offers actionable implications for tour operators, policymakers, and industry stakeholders seeking to advance sustainability in emerging destinations.