The Sustainable Tourism Lab was developed to protect tourism destinations for future generations of residents and visitors.
The Lab provides data and services to help tourism organizations around the country balance visitor and community needs. It aims to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to pursue sustainable solutions to common tourism industry problems.
To improve the tourism industry through a collaborative, stakeholder-driven process, the lab works to research and design sustainable solutions to the industry’s most pressing problems.
Community Sentiment of Tourism
OSU researchers, along with partner institutions from across the US, Asia/Pacific, and Central America are quantifying how local residents perceive tourism.
Food Waste Technology
Business, Engineering and Computer Science faculty and students have built a prototype to quantify and reduce post-consumer food waste.
Building A Sustainable Workforce
There are jobs that will always have low retention rates and that technology is not currently available to automate. For those jobs, the answer is rapid, cost-effective and impactful retraining.
2024
tourism tax position paper 2024
Protecting Paradise A Socially Optimal Tourist Tax Framework – Montgomery 2024
2025
Evaluating Economic Policy Responses to Appease Growing Dissent in Tourism
Todd Montgomery
2024
2023
Snapshot Research Reports
COMMUNITY SENTIMENT OF TOURISM
2023
Our Research in the News
destination think
Learning from resident sentiment studies at OSU’s Sustainable Tourism Lab
pbs
Sustainable Tourism Lab measures how residents weigh pros, cons of tourism in their communities
usa today
Reports of price gouging at Oregon hotels after wildfires leads governor to issue order
