In this work, TiO2/SnO2 hollow hierarchical nanofibers (TiO2/SnO2 hHNFs) are prepared by first synthesizing SnO2 hollow nanofibers by electrospinning and annealing, then using them as substrates to grow TiO2 nanorods using a hydrothermal process. The samples are tested under UV irradiation for their photocatalytic activity toward Reactive Black 5 (RB5) and Rhodamine B dyes. The TiO2/SnO2 hHNFs show excellent photocatalytic activity toward the RB5 dye, and perform at level 73 times higher than that of SnO2 nanofibers and comparable with that of commercially available TiO2 nanoparticles. The repeatability of the photocatalytic performance of the TiO2/SnO2 hHNFs is quite high; the decolorization capacity decrease to 80.6% of the initial value after 20 cycles. These significant performance improvements are attributed to the increased specific surface area and advantageous energy-band heterostructure of the TiO2/SnO2 hHNFs, which enable effective electron/hole transport and suppresses the recombination of photogenerated electron/hole pairs. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.