Greenwashing In The Hotel Industry - Essay Example

? Greenwashing in the Hotel Industry Presented to Greenwashing in the Hotel Industry Introduction Around the globe, there is a renewed trend among consumers to purchase eco-friendly products, which include reusable shopping bags, organic clothing, energy saving lighting bulbs and many other items. Companies have taken a different marketing gimmick partying their systems and processes to adhere to eco-friendly standards. The hospitality industries that include hotels and the tourism sectors has not been left behind, with efforts towards ensuring hotels are certified with various certifications towards energy efficiency and water usage. Hotels are currently looking to be covered under tourism certification for sustainable Tourism (Martha 2002). The international Year of Ecotourism has been set up to consolidate certification programs that are important in ensuring sustainable tourism and related eco-technology. However, currently, the so called Green technologies and products have flooded the market; there is a major question whether all the green tags given to hotels and other tourism institutions are indeed benefitting the environment. As more and more people are looking for eco-friendly tags, and shun those businesses without such tags, businesses have shifted to acquiring deceptive eco-tags. This implies that consumers today come out losing from deceptive labeling that have no impact on conserving the environment, with eco-tags being used as business promotion gimmicks with no tangible effects on the ground as would be expected from such eco-tags. Discussion The term green washing was coined by the environmentalist biologist Westerveld in 1986 to refer to those organizations that spend more time and high budgets to advertise they are green than actually putting in place measures and mechanisms to ensure environmentally friendly practices (Cohen & Aaron, 2010). This is because; people have currently become more blind to environmental messages as the market for eco-friendly products increases. Consequently, the number of business that would like have a share in the market increases, making consumers more skeptical over the recent past of the claims many hotel establishments are being eco-friendly. For example, there are vague regulations and standards particularly in the food and hospitality industries. More than 33% of all food products that were launched in 2008 claimed to be natural according to a research by Dara O’Rourke, of the University of California Environmental policy, and a professor and founder of GoodGuide website that monitored consumer products and their eco friendliness (Cohen & Aaron, 2010). However the research found that more than 98% of foods that claimed to be natural in the US supermarkets and other hospitality institutions were found to be false regarding their Eco friendliness tags, while 22% of products had green claims with no inherent meaning. Many eco-friendly tags are aimed at saving money rather than environmental sustainability Miller, Melillo and Solman (2006) asserted that no matter how genuine hotels are, it would be very unlikely for the hotels to adhere to eco-labelling if there we nonprofits to be enjoyed. However, in a number of hotels, in order to capture this perception and create a positive public goodwill, some hotels have initiated programs that require contribution of certain sum of money to charity. For example, some hotel have elaborate signs that tell guests that reusing of towels will save money that will be donated to charity or to environmental bodies (Gallicano, 2011). As Gallicano explains, such hotel establishments undertake to carry out such gimmicks because many guests and customers do not have any knowledge regarding the internal working of the organization and their sustainable business practices. Therefore as more companies adopt green campaigns, consumers are getting more confused with the real meaning of “green ,“ with branding experts finding it difficult to issue certification in green marketing due to increased public concern’s regarding ‘greenwashing’ in such organizations. In July 2007, one of the highly influential blogs TripplePundit.com had a number of contributions about hotels that indicated that Going Green is just but a big deception in the hotel industry (Jessica, 2008). The blog reported on green practice of reputable establishments such as the Fairmont Hotels, Kempton Hotels and Restaurants, Starwood’s, and Marriot Hotels, all which have been granted the LEED certification. The best practice that was unidentifiable from this campaign was that each hotel mentioned contributed 1% of their revenue to the local environmentalist groups, but did not have any elaborate development regarding the hotel’s undertaking to ensure environmental sustainability as would be expected under the LEED certification (Jessica, 2008). A blogger reviewing and sharing news regarding Proximity in North Carolina, which had received a LEED Gold certification and claimed to be using 36% less energy than other hotels, and 30% less water also put the reliability of such figures into question, judging from customer responses from the hotel services. Most hotels in order to hoodwink customers have huge insistencies in their eco sustainability practices. Some hotels may meet the requirements of eco friendliness on one part only to perform very unsustainable in others (Gallicano, 2011). Moreover, some hotel establishments have undertaken to produce remarkable and well-designed websites that narrate of the measures that have been taken to meet ecofriendly practices in attempts that would amount to rating themselves on how best they meet such sustainable criteria, which does not give a holistic picture regarding their operations and real sustainable practices undertaken by the organizations. Solving the ‘Greenwashing’ Problem There is need to urgently address the growing concerns in greenwashing problem among hotels and other hospitality industries to protect public interests, and use of eco-friendly tags as marketing labels with no tangible results to portray. One of the changes that have to be implemented is putting more emphasis on focusing on process based measures compared to focusing on performance standards. In performance standards approach, hotels and other hospitality organizations will offer pleasing claims and objectives aimed at achieving a certain environmental goal, which makes most hotels to be certified under the LEED certification. However, more hotels are involved in selective disclosure of information where they tend to gain and maintain legitimacy by revealing information about their best performances only, and obscuring the less perfuming areas from the public. This is a form of attention deflection where such organizations will pursue varied strategies, which includes bolstering their social image to avoid scrutiny of any illegitimate or questionable operations within the company (Ramus & Montiel, 2005). However, when process based performance is followed, such hotels will not be required only to submit their objectives and goals towards sustainability, but each and every step has to be audited with content follow up on the progress. Such approaches will result in actual goals being met and the hotels adhering to eco-friendly operations and not greenwashing. There should be strict follow up and auditing on each and every certified institution regarding the performance standards as laid out by the standard bodies in every certification. It is rather difficult to measure the disconnect between social responsibility and the concerted efforts by a firm towards adhering to standards without a third party monitoring and verification (Laufer, 2003). This will involve putting in place measures that investigate the fairness in which the pubic criticize the hotels’ environmental policies compared to the company’s certification levels. While some public opinions and criticism may not be founded, some customer critics are genuine and indicate an avenue that may be followed in investigating whether the hotel in question follows the stated certification goals and objectives the letter and spirit. This is complicated considering that no standard exists today regarding the level of CSR in hotels, though there are standards to erasure environmental sustainabilaity as indicated by the specific hotel establishment. There should also be strict disciplinary measures for hotels found to be using eco-tags for marketing purpose and not following the expectations and objectives of the environmental specifications. Kim & Dutta (2009) noted that some organizations in the hotel industry may be powerful enough to influence legislation to their benefit, meaning that if such eco-tags do not lead to profit making, such companies will try means and was to subvert their applications and only use them as a marketing gimmick, to take part in the eco-market share, where the public are more willing to buy services in organizations that show sensitivity to the environment. In order to discourage such trends and check the currently increasing greenwashing problem, there has to be a monitory body with strict rules and disciplinary measures that face scud hotels once identified, icnlduign stripping them off any accreditation to discourage greenwashing trends from increasing. This would be the only way to discourage and ensure objectivity and seriousness in environmental certification using accreditation bodies such as LEEDs and the Eco tourism tags. The issue of environmental sustainability has gummed much ground in the global market today, with customers being more willing than ever to deal directly with companies that have elaborate policies towards environmental sustainability. This has led to a rush in the hotel and truism industry where major hotel establishments formulate strategies and policies towards eco-fidelity system and processes to compete for the high-niche and environmental sensitive customers in the market. Consequently, other hotels have used such eco-tags as a marketing label to take part in sharing the eco market segment, but with no tangible results or objectives towards environmental sustainability. This has led to greenwashing in the hotel industry. To prevent greenwshing, process rather than performance measurements have to be adopted, there has to be strict disciplinary measures for such hotels involved in greenwashing, and constant monitoring by an active third party to ensure such hotels adhere to the required standards. Therefore, the environmental awareness campaigns have led to an informed customer segment, with holes taking adage to tap customers in the new marketing segment of eco-friendly services. Such rush has led to greenwashing in the hotel industry, which is currently more rampant than ever and involves the use of eco-tags as marketing tools, which is deceptive to the customer. References Erica O., & Aaron M.C., (2010) From Eco-friendly to Eco-intelligent, The Futurist, 44(5), 28-32. Gallicano D.T., (2011) A Critical Analysis of Greenwashing Claims, Public Relations Journal 5(3), 1-21. Jessica H., (2008). Green is the Word, Hospitality Design, 30(7), 55 Kim, I., & Dutta, M. J. (2009). Studying crisis communication from the subaltern studies framework: Grassroots activism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Public Relations Research, 21(2), 142-164. doi:10.1080/10627260802557423 Laufer, W. S. (2003). Social accountability and corporate greenwashing. Journal of Business Ethics, 43(3), 253-261. Martha H., (2002)Who Owns Paradise? Strong Certification Programs Separate Genuine Ecotourism from Greenwashing Fast-Buck Artists, The Environmental Magazine, 13(4), 33 Melillo, W., Miller, S., & Solman, G. (2006, July). Companies find it’s not easy marketing green. Brandweek, 47(28), 8 Ramus, C. A., & Montiel, I. (2005). When are corporate environmental policies a form of greenwashing? Business Society, 44(4), 377-414. doi:10.1177/0007650305278120 Read More