Ecological Risk Management in International Tourism: Environmental Benchmarking and SDG Integration
Abstract
International tourism generates approximately 10% of global GDP and employs one in ten workers worldwide, yet the sector faces a structural paradox: high-performing destinations simultaneously accumulate ecological risks. This study examines the relationship between benchmarking performance and environmental risk in the hotel and food tourism sectors, with particular relevance to water diplomacy and sustainable development frameworks. Utilizing the Tourism and Hospitality Industry Analysis dataset comprising 500 observations across 20 countries and 56 cities (2020–2024), the study employs Principal Component Analysis (PCA), k-means cluster analysis, and a Random Forest algorithm (1,100 trees, 82% accuracy) to construct an integral performance index and identify risk drivers. Results indicate that waste management quality and carbon footprint are the two strongest predictors of risk level, outperforming financial and occupancy metrics. Cluster analysis reveals three strategic segments, with even the highest-performing segment showing 29.7% of observations classified as high-risk. These findings demonstrate that superior benchmarking scores do not guarantee low environmental risk, and there is a nonlinear relationship with critical implications for water-sensitive tourism destinations and SDG targets 6, 12, 13, and 17. Practical recommendations are provided for hotel operators, food tourism managers, and national policy-makers, with specific reference to Uzbekistan's tourism expansion trajectory.