This work has as its main objective the investigation of how the ecotourism segment has positioned itself in Rio de Janeiro market and which contributions, the companies from this segment, can give to the improvement of sustainable development in the Rio de Janeiro state. The development of this research is justified by a discussion about the way that companies related to sustainability corroborates their strategies and with the results from this study, how they can improve their results. The ecotourism in the state of Rio de Janeiro was chosen based on the fact that the World Cup (2014) and the Olympic Games (2016) will take place in the aforementioned state. The research is classified as a mix between quantitative and qualitative, because use questionnaires and interviews, respectively. The research focus was to analyze the factors that limit and facilitates the organization growth and the sustainable entrepreneurship actions of the companies from the chosen set (study sample) of this study. After analyzing the data, it was possible to identify the profile of the respondents and found that the socio-cultural and ecological environments are facilitating the growth of the sampled organizations and the political and legal environment is a limiter. Moreover, it was found that ecotourism companies in the sample contribute to the sustainability of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in the social, environmental, economic dimensions.