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.
COMMUNITY SENTIMENT OF TOURISM
2023

Our Research in the News

The Astorian: Seaside Part of Tourism Research

NBC News: No free parking or hot tub ragers: Tourist destinations tighten their rules

OPB Think Out Loud Interview: Sustainable Tourism Lab measures how residents weigh pros, cons of tourism in their communities
Projects

Building A Sustainable Workforce

Community Sentiment of Tourism

Food Monitoring
Blogs

Tourism Lab Introduction

On The Road Again!
