Save It for Later: Understanding How Circular Economy Practices and Global Energy Threats Drive Energy Resilience in Sustainable Hotels

The current paper concerns the interplay of the circular economy (CE) and global energy threats facing the hospitality industry. Despite the growing emphasis on CE implementation within sustainable hospitality, little empirical evidence explains how CE practices enhance hotels’ green energy resilience amid escalating global energy threats and resource uncertainty, particularly in emerging markets. Addressing this research gap, this paper investigates how the 6R CE model (Redesign, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, and Rethink) strengthens green energy resilience in sustainable hotels while examining the moderating roles of policy clarity and regulations together with the influences of stakeholder collaboration and management commitment within the Saudi Arabian hospitality sector. The study adopted a four-wave temporally separated quantitative survey design, collecting data from 360 managers working in Saudi sustainable hotels across four time intervals. The proposed conceptual model was evaluated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), complemented by mediation and moderation analyses. The findings demonstrate that global energy threats strongly stimulate CE adoption (β = 0.848, p < 0.001), while CE practices substantially improve green energy resilience (β = 0.719, p < 0.001). The results further reveal a strong indirect effect through the Strength of CE Implementation (β = 0.813, p < 0.001), highlighting implementation maturity as a critical mechanism through which circular initiatives translate into resilience outcomes. The proposed model explained 55% of the variance in CE implementation and demonstrated substantial predictive capability for energy resilience. Policy clarity and regulations significantly strengthen the CE–resilience relationship, while stakeholder collaboration and management commitment further enhance these relationships. The results further identify the 6R circularity framework as an effective strategic pathway through which sustainable hotels can mitigate global energy threats while enhancing organizational resilience. This study contributes to the CE and sustainable hospitality literature by providing one of the first empirical models linking CE implementation with green energy resilience under conditions of global energy uncertainty, offering actionable implications for policymakers, hotel managers, and the implementation of Saudi Vision 2030.