Environmental Sustainability in the Hotel Industry - Australia - Case Study Example

Environmental Sustainability in the Hotel Industry: The Case of Australia Name Institution Name Date Introduction Sustainability is the endurance of processes and systems. Environmentally sustainability is making decisions that reduce the influence of an organization’s negative influence on the environment. The success of the hotel industry relies on the environment, and the lack of environmental sustainability measures affects the general operation of the hotel. Australia and the world are experiencing challenges in climate changes and other environmental concerns. Each country and entity aim to create measures that advance environmental sustainability to ensure the different obligations and objectives are accomplished accordingly. It requires understanding some of the strategies that can be employed in environmental sustainability. Reviewing the environmental sustainability ion the hotel industry is important to determine whether the policies and approaches are in place to ensure sustainability. The hotel industry can employ different environmental sustainability strategies and reviewing the success and inclusion of these strategies is important in determining the effectiveness of the entire process of sustainability. Literature Review In discussing environmental sustainability, numerous procedures and approaches are integrated to the success of the policies and aspirations. The discussion is promised on environmentally sensitive design, environmental reporting, and nature conservation, reducing carbon footprint, corporate social responsibility and environmental management operations. a) Environmentally Sensitive Design Environmentally sensitive design includes green building, which refers to using processes and structure that is environmental resource efficient and environmentally responsible throughout the building’s design and lifecycle. The lifecycle of a building includes demolition, renovation, maintenance, operation, construction and even sitting design (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). These numerous practices complement and expand the building design concerns of comfort, durability, utility and economy. The objective of green building is improving employee productivity, protecting occupant health and efficient use of natural environment (Hall, Scott and Gössling 2013). Therefore, the design of the building should integrate numerous processes to sustain environmentally sustainability (Barber, Deale and Goodman, 2011). b) Environmental Reporting The environmental reporting is important because it informs the environmental measures employed and areas requiring adjustments (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). Frequently presentation of data and relevant information enables understanding the extent in which the hotel industry has contributed to worsening the environment and also preserving the environment (Mihalič, Žabkar and Cvelbar 2012). It creates mechanism and modalities to continue supporting the requirements of environmental sustainability. Environmentally sustainability is a strategy but determining the success of the process relies on the reporting framework (Myung, McClaren and Li 2012). The reporting framework enables identification areas requiring refining, provides data for comparison and creates means of creating structures to support sustainability (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). c) Nature Conservation Nature conservation is an ethic of protection, allocation and resource use (Barber, Deale, and Goodman, 2011). The focus of nature conservation is marinating the health across the world: its, biological, habitats and fisheries diversity. The focus extends on energy conservation and materials conservation, which are seen as integral to the protection of nature (Chan, 2011). The nature conservation is common at the areas in which hotels are located near reaction areas and parks; however, the advancement ion policies and directives are resulted in organizations engaging specialties in conservation industry and also restoring public lands (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). d) Reducing Carbon Footprint A carbon footprint is a set of greenhouse gas emissions that results from a given entity or process. The emissions can be caused by a person, product, event or even an organization (Kang et al., 2012). In the hotel industry, the greenhouse gasses are emitted from hotel operations, transport, consumption and production of food. A hotel can employ different strategies for reducing the amount of greenhouse emission. The important ones are engaging the guests and employees to take action (Su, Hall and Ozanne 2013). Others include build greener hotels, green supply chain, energy and waste consumption or management, and reduction in product usage or efficiency at the hotel (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). e) Corporate Social Responsibility Corporate social responsibility allows an organization to embrace the organization’s actions through the encouragement of positive influence to the processes and procedures at the workplace (Buckley, 2012). It includes creating a positive influence on activities and interested practices including the public, stakeholders, communities, employees, consumers and environment (Dodds and Holmes, 2011). It is the inclusion of public interests in the management of the hotel and also honoring the fundamentals of the triple bottom line: profit, planet and people (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). Corporate social responsibility program recognizes the significance of benefiting the global issues and communities, such as greenhouse gas emissions reduction and climate change (Hsieh, 2012). The programs also extend to other stakeholders including the physical environment, the local community, suppliers, to staff (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). The corporate social responsibility strategy is reflecting the requirements of the different stakeholders and creating procedures and policies to accomplish the different requirements (Moeller, Dolnicar and Leisch 2011). For example, the needs and requirements of the communities are different from suppliers (Barber, Deale, and Goodman, 2011). Hence, targeting the policies and procedures are important in ensuring the needs and requirements of the interested parties are acknowledged and integrated into the operational frameworks (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). f) Environmental Management Operations Environmental management optimizes the management of wastes and efficiency use of resources in the hotel. The processes include waste management, energy efficiency and water conservation (Barber, Deale, and Goodman, 2011). The management of the hotel develops and implements numerous processes, which follows a top-down organizational structure. Environmentally sustainability management includes continuous improvement of processes and practices with specified goals and targets. To fulfill the requirements of environmental management, programs such as recyclable notepads and pens, hotel room occupancy controls for air conditioning and lighting, towel reuse program; this can be seen as a holistic program to improve the operations at the hotel (Barber, Deale, and Goodman, 2011). It is also a cost effectiveness program because the less wastage may translate into better savings (Nicholls and Kang 2012). The “back of house” should be targeted because the management has control; for example, kitchen and laundry operations may need changes in staff practices, and these changes may create a larger impact on the organization (Assaf, Josiassen and Cvelbar 2012). It can be achieved through effective communication and training towards serving the requirements of the guests. Research Aim To what extent has the Australian hotel industry embraced environmentally sustainable measures? Data Collection Data collection is the method in which information is collected to accomplish the requirements of the study. A quantitative approach will be employed in collecting the information. A questionnaire will be created with diverse questions targeting the different stakeholders in the hotel industry. In addition, the questionnaire will be filled by different individuals and stakeholders in ensuring conclusive information, which is relevant to the hotel industry, are collected. The questionnaire will then be distributed to the government organizations and other hospitality players. The specifically targeted respondents are the guests, the management of the hotels, the employees, the community and the government authorities. Six major hotels will be targeted and the information collected will range from integral processes to future approaches to environmental sustainability. Therefore, the questionnaire will contain parts depending on the targeted respondents and the nature of information required to be collected. With the help of Microsoft Excel Software, the data will be analyzed and presented in the forms of charts, graphs, and table. A basic comparison will be done based on the views and responses from the six hotels to determine where the strategies of environmentally sustainability measures are similar and the effectiveness of their different approaches to sustainability. References Assaf, A.G., Josiassen, A. and Cvelbar, L.K., 2012. Does triple bottom line reporting improve hotel performance? International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(2), pp.596-600. Barber, N., Deale, C. and Goodman, R., 2011. Environmental sustainability in the hospitality management curriculum: Perspectives from three groups of stakeholders. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 23(1), pp.6-17. Buckley, R., 2012. Sustainable tourism: Research and reality. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(2), pp.528-546. Chan, E.S., 2011. Implementing environmental management systems in small-and medium-sized hotels: Obstacles. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 35(1), pp.3-23. Dodds, R. and Holmes, M.R., 2011. Sustainability in Canadian B&Bs: comparing the east versus west. International Journal of Tourism Research, 13(5), pp.482-495. Hall, C.M., Scott, D. and Gössling, S., 2013. The primacy of climate change for sustainable international tourism. Sustainable Development, 21(2), pp.112-121. Hsieh, Y.C., 2012. Hotel companies' environmental policies and practices: a content analysis of their web pages. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 24(1), pp.97-121. Kang, K.H., Stein, L., Heo, C.Y. and Lee, S., 2012. Consumers’ willingness to pay for green initiatives of the hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(2), pp.564-572. Mihalič, T., Žabkar, V. and Cvelbar, L.K., 2012. A hotel sustainability business model: evidence from Slovenia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 20(5), pp.701-719. Moeller, T., Dolnicar, S. and Leisch, F., 2011. The sustainability–profitability trade-off in tourism: can it be overcome? Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 19(2), pp.155-169. Myung, E., McClaren, A., and Li, L., 2012. Environmentally related research in scholarly hospitality journals: Current status and future opportunities. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(4), pp.1264-1275. Nicholls, S. and Kang, S., 2012. Going green: the adoption of environmental initiatives in Michigan's lodging sector. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 20(7), pp.953-974. Su, Y.P., Hall, C.M. and Ozanne, L., 2013. Hospitality industry responses to climate change: A benchmark study of Taiwanese tourist hotels. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 18(1-2), pp.92-107. Read More