The concept of supply chain (SC) and SCM has become a vital management trend in a two-decade period. the past two decades. The significant share of logistics expenses in the price of completed goods is one of the prominent factors impacting its significance. Customer focus, fierce rivalry, shorter product life cycles, and fostered internal communication tools inside companies are just a few of the several factors that render SCM growing in significance.

SCM can be referred to as the collection of procedures that a company uses to manage its supply chain behaviors and accomplish set goals. The Supply Chain Council (2007) defines SCM as a progression that comprises all efforts involved in the production and delivery of final products or services, from the supplier's supplier to the customer’s customer. Demand and supply management, obtaining supplies and materials, production and assembly, inventory tracking and storage, order entry and administration, distribution via all channels, and customer delivery are all covered by supply chain management. Guests are one of the key stakeholders in the hotel supply chain. Their decisions have a significant impact on the achievement of sustainability goals through their choice to consume products that are less harmful to the natural and social environment and generate revenue for the hotel and (Ásványi & Chaker, 2023). Although research on SCM is common and research into the hotel supply chain has been attracting more interest. Huang et al. (2012) addressed the hotel supply chain within the larger milieu of tourist supply chain management. The conceptual framework provided by Xu and Gursoy (2015a) was one of the pioneer the discussion of systematic hotel supply chain management, SCM in hotels is defined as a network of hospitality organizations involved in a variety of activities, such as supplying different parts of hospitality goods and services, such as raw food materials, furnishings, and machinery, to various suppliers; marketing and distributing the finished hospitality products and/or services to customers. The hotel supply chain provides both products and services from the original suppliers to the end user with a process of adding value Kothari et al. (2005). SCM processes have become an essential strategic tool with the potential to significantly impact organizational performance in the hotel industry (Jawabreh et al., 2023). It combines the characteristics of both the manufacturing supply chain and the service supply chain.

The World Commission on Environment and Development's (1987) Brundtland report featured a notion of sustainability that is currently most frequently recognized. According to the investigation, sustainable development is development that satisfies the demands of the present without jeopardizing the potential of subsequent generations (WCED 1987). According to Dylick and Hokerts (2002), sustainability is an indication of societal growth toward a more prosperous and pleasant society where values, the environment, and earnings are safeguarded for coming generations. Three components make up sustainable development: the environment, social justice, and economic efficiency (Aras & Crowther, 2009). This viewpoint is consistent with Elkington and Fennell (1997) notion of three bottom lines (TBL). TBL is a method for incorporating sustainability into the workplace and establishing a new standard to measure the extent to which an organization is able to strike a balance between its monetary goals and its ethical and ecological obligations (Liburd & Edwards, 2010). Thus, the TBL theory serves as a framework to evaluate how corporate actions affect the concomitant goals of equitable society, financial achievement, and the health of the environment (Carter & Rogers, 2008). The TBL theory is, therefore, a tool for measuring the impact of business practices in relation to the simultaneous quest for economic afluence, social justice, and the health of the earth. According to TBL, sustainable actions have three dimensions as follows: The environmental sustainability dimension focuses on minimizing the adverse environmental impacts provoked by supply chain operations (Hassini et al., 2012). The social dimension refers to maximizing the social welfare of supply chain stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers and anyone else impacted by supply chain operations (Gopalakrishnan et al., 2012); The economic dimension emphasized the idea of creating and maintaining long-term profits (Kleindorfer et al., 2005) while minimizing negative environmental and social impacts.

Sustainability incorporated into SCM led to the perception of SSCM and was suggested by Linton et al. (2007). Research entangled the fact that SSCM is a step towards closed supply chain management based on TBL that includes economic, environmental and social performance (Liu et al., 2017). Fundamentally, Carter and Rogers (2008), based on the complementary definition of SCM and a broad review of the sustainability literature, declared that SSCM is “the strategic, transparent integration and achievement of an organization’s social, environmental, and economic goals in the systemic coordination of key inter-organizational business processes for improving the long-term economic performance of the individual company and its supply chains” (p.368).

The integration of TBL into SCM has been considered an effective business direction for enterprises as well as a contribution to the further sustainable development, not merely increasing the legal onus on businesses (Liburd & Edwards, 2010). The initial focus of SSCM research was on the environmental impact. However, concerns about corporate social responsibility give rise to an awareness of the socioeconomic aspects of supply chain management (De Brito & Van der Laan, 2010).

SSCM theory in hospitality is founded on the clue that hospitality businesses are pushed to be involved in the source chain for suppliers to assure that each element of their service or product purchased from the provider is sustainable, securing the sustainability of the end product or service. This ensues that SSCM in hotels is also significantly dependent on the three dimensions of TBL in the collaborative interaction between companies, their suppliers and customers (Carter & Liane Easton, 2011). (1) The environment: A hotel with a sustainable application chain is one that has made considerable improvements to reduce its impact on the natural environment (Jones et al., 2014). The application chain management application method needs to encompass green procurement, green design, green manufacture, green operations, reverse logistics, and waste management (Morovati et al.,2022); (2) Economics: This aspect of economics is the most straightforward to quantify and analyzed thanks to its quantitative feature. It relates to a hotel's costs, profits, revenue, and return on investment (Nangpiire et al., 2024); (3) Society: To achieve consumer demand sustainability, hotels must prioritize social responsibility vand demonstrate commitment to service quality to customers will foster the hotel's reputation and image (Mohamed & Elkashak, 2020).

According to Howard and Sheth (1969), customer experience is used to measure satisfaction, service quality, marketing activities, and customer value. Experience quality demonstrates superiority or apparent satisfaction and subjective customer response to business engagement. Agreeing with this view, Lemon and Verhoef (2016) demonstrated that experience quality serves as an important foundation for overall customer satisfaction. Many authors have emphasized the nature of customer experience management as management based on customer touchpoints (Edelman & Singer, 2015). The tourism and hospitality industries are often seen as more experience-based service industries (Gilmore & Pine, 2002). Klaus and Maklan (2013) have conducted in-depth interviews with travelers to explore the fundamental aspects between service quality and experience quality for purchase behavior in the service economy and have found that providing experience quality gives travelers satisfaction based on functional and emotional benefits. Thus, customer experience encompasses the entire spectrum of consumer purchasing knowledge, which includes experiencing the full range of stages in a hotel's supply chain from information seeking, service purchasing, usage, and after-sales activities (Verhoefet et al., 2009).

Hospitality is an energy-intensive and waste-generating industry. As a result, the sector has come under pressure from environmental organizations and nonprofits to minimize negative impacts on the environment and ensure sustainability in supply chain implementation. In addition, the increasing awareness of consumers has led many hotels to study and apply sustainable measures in the production and supply of products and services. Therefore, researchers have shown that satisfaction is based on the level of customer experience quality and it is affected by the environmentally friendly actions of hotels (Slevitch et al., 2013); excellent financial performance of hotels (Lo et al., 2015) and social responsibility (Holmes & Yan, 2012).

H1: Perceived economic benefits positively influence tourists’ experiential quality.

H2: Perceived social responsibility of hotels positively influences tourists’ experiential quality.

Consumers are increasingly cognizant of the environmental consequences of their consumption habits and expect hotels to implement environmental protection practices. Ribbink et al. (2025) indicate that consumers tend to favor brands that adopt green practices and demonstrate a commitment to reducing their ecological footprint. Heightened awareness has consequently shifted preferences and the standards by which consumers assess experiential quality toward products and brands that embody sustainable values. Therefore, the study proposes:

In the hospitality sector, when more and more consumers expect hotels to take eco-friendly action, environmentally friendly activities (Jang et al., 2015), environmental sustainability has been shown to contribute to improving customer loyalty (Chen, 2015); socially responsible actions towards internal and external stakeholders of hotels, relationship management activities in the supply chain can increase the reputation of hotels (Nikolaeva & Bicho, 2011); good financial ability will improve product quality performance, cost savings ensure long-term and sustainable economic benefits will contribute to customer loyalty (Shi et al., 2014). Many researchers have cited behavioral intention and loyalty as consequences of assessing experience quality, satisfaction and thereby increased willingness to pay for sustainability initiatives (Chen & Tung, 2014).

Although a growing number of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable hotel offerings, price sensitivity and price perceptions remain salient, particularly among consumers with lower disposable incomes. Prior research indicates that the perceived costs of sustainable products can influence customers’ willingness to pay. Accordingly, scholars emphasize the need for hotel firms to balance sustainability with affordability in order to appeal to a broader consumer base (Elbelehy & Crispim (2025).). Therefore, the study proposes the following hypothesis:

H5: Perceived social responsibility of hotels positively influences tourists' willingness to Pay.

Compared to traditional products and services, high prices are the most important barrier to green consumption (Yadav et al., 2024). In the green hospitality industry, where competition is fierce and construction costs are high, practitioners must understand the drivers that drive customers' willingness to pay high prices (Ligas & Chaudhuri, 2012). Thus, the willingness to pay high prices is strongly impacted by the quality of experience and the sustainable competitive advantage of the hotel supply chain (Casidy and Wymer, 2016). Therefore, the study proposes the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis H7: Quality of experience has a significant positive impact on tourists' willingness to pay.

Hypotheses H7a,b,c: Experience quality plays a mediating role in the relationship between Perceived economic benefits, perceived social responsibility and perceived environmental protection practices factors with tourists' willingness to pay.

According to Chen and Tung (2014), many customers are aware that their purchase and use of products and services can be harmful to the environment and sometimes their concerns and perceptions about the impact on the environment can translate into environmentally friendly service decisions. From awareness, some of the hotel's customers have sought and are willing to pay high fees for eco-friendly products (Chia-Jung & PeiChun, 2014). Social cognitive theories (Bandura, 2014) proposes that people with higher levels of environmental awareness and concern (including physical and social environments) are more likely to associate with businesses that have clear environmental policies and practices. Therefore, within the scope of the research of the article, the study will consider the regulatory role of customer education affecting the quality of experience with products

Figure 1: Modeling the impact of consumer perceptions of hotel supply chain sustainability on experience quality and willingness to pay (Source: Author's proposal)

The questionnaire was built with scales inherited and developed from reputable studies on SCM and SSCM in hotels. Most of the scales were adopted from foreign studies, and hence in order to check the suitability and ensure reliability, the research team had consulted with 15 experts - researchers in the field of marketing and supply chain. IAfter comments from experts, some items were revised and the questionnaire was completed with a 3-part structure: (i) introduction of the purpose of the questionnaire; (ii) the content of the questions and (iii) demographic information and the Likert measure were used with 5 levels (level 1: completely disagree - level 5: completely agree).

Participants in the study were international and domestic tourists who used products and services at 4–5 star hotels in 3 areas, namely Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang – the areas with a dynamically developing hotel market in Vietnam. The convenience sampling method was used. A total of 950 surveys were distributed in both direct and indirect forms via the Google Forms application. The total number of valid questionnaires obtained from the two survey forms was 876, reaching 84.4%. Of which, the survey response rate of women accounted for 45.48% and men accounted for 54,52%. Regarding age, the age group ranges from 18 years old to over 55 years old, of which the 18–24 year old group has the lowest response rate with 2,01% and the highest is the 45–54 year old age group with 44,47%. Finally, regarding the income of survey respondents, under 10 million accounts for 1,26% and the highest is over 20 million with 46,98%.

There are 5 scales to measure latent variables in the model, which are the Perception of economic benefits (ECO), perception of social responsibility (SOC), perception of environmental protection activities (ENV), Quality of experience (QOE), Willingness to pay (WTP). The following table was used for the purpose of summarizing the load factors in the PLS-SEM model.

The results of factor analysis with the support of SmartPLS software show that the factor loading coefficients of the indexes were all greater than 0.6. That illustrates that the observed variables of each measurement component of the scale all met the requirements.

Evaluation of the reliability of the scale

The results of using PLS-SEM analysis with the measurement model showed that the scales were reliable and appropriate (at the required value). Specifically, the analysis results showed that the Cronbach Alpha coefficient of all 5 latent structures was in the range of 0.869–0.903 (all higher than 0.7), the rho_A coefficient was in the range 0.905–0.939 (both are higher than 0.7) (Table 1), and the mean extracted variance coefficients of all latent structures in the extended model were greater than 0.5 It showed that the observed variables used to measure the latent concepts of the research model all had the necessary reliability and good internal consistency.

Evaluation of the convergent validity of the scale

The results of factor analysis with the support of SmartPLS software showed that the factor loading coefficients of the observed variables in the latent structures were all greater than 0.5 (average extracted variance column AVE) (Table 1), the lowest also the extracted mean variance of coherence is 0.658 > 0.5. Therefore, each latent structure in the model showed good a convergence value.

Evaluation of the discriminant of the scale

The findings of this study provide practical implications in encouraging hotel managers to adopt sustainable supply chain management to improve their performance as they now have a clearer view of the impact of each optimization factor on customer experience metrics and willingness to pay. Based on the research results, some implications are proposed: (1) Hotels need to invest in modern supply chain management systems, using AI and Big Data to optimize processes and enhance customer experience. In particular, the application of automated management technology and smart tracking systems will help improve flexibility and quickly respond to demand; (2) Establish clear, consistent processes for purchasing, inventory management, supplier collaboration, transportation, and waste disposal to save costs in the long term. Apply international standards such as ISO or good operating standards, appropriate to the hotel industry, to ensure consistency and quality; (3) Effectively manage and reduce waste to protect the environment and enhance the hotel's social responsibility. Apply waste reduction initiatives such as rational storage, optimized purchasing, use of environmentally friendly products, use of renewable energy; (4) Promote propaganda activities, raise employees' awareness of social responsibility to create quality experiences for customers and contribute to building a friendly and sustainable hotel image.