Abstract
As global tourism recovers from the pandemic, the challenge of managing sustainable growth has gained critical importance. Scholars emphasise the need to strike a balance between tourism expansion and the preservation of the environment, local communities, and the overall quality of visitor experiences (HigginsDesbiolles et al., 2019). In response, many regions are implementing policies that limit tourism infrastructure, prioritise sustainability, and focus on quality over quantity (Pan et al., 2018). English has emerged as the primary lingua franca for discussing sustainability in tourism communication, largely due to the monolingual nature of global sustainability and environmental debates (Chapman, 2022). Reflecting this linguistic shift, this paper examines how sustainable tourism is promoted in one of Europe’s leading tourist destinations: South Tyrol, an Alpine region where German, Italian, and Ladin languages and cultural identities have historically coexisted. Using a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of English-language web content from tourism organisations, combined with semi-structured interviews with tourism professionals, this study explores the linguistic and communicative strategies used to frame sustainable tourism within a complex identity landscape. Interviews reveal concerns among communicators that sustainability-related terminology may be ineffective in tourism messaging, as it risks sounding clichéd or overly technical. Corpus analysis confirms the presence of such terminology in digital texts, heavily influenced by sustainability certifications (e.g., GSTC) and the broader global debate. However, beyond generic sustainability language, the communication also reflects values rooted in local culture, tradition, and identity, which help promote sustainable tourism practices in a more implicit and culturally resonant way. The research highlights the close interconnection between sustainability, local identity, and culture, suggesting that sustainability messaging is most effective when aligned with a region’s unique cultural and environmental heritage. This approach repositions sustainability from a regulatory concept to an integral part of local identity, enhancing the message’s authenticity and emotional impact.