While many aspects of the hospitality sector are relatively straightforward to record and interpret (occupancy, room rates, RevPAR, etc.), sustainability has remained intrinsically difficult to quantify.
A good starting point for hospitality professionals would be to adopt a tool to assist sustainability progress, and measurement thereof. For example, sustainable tourism certification programmes offer a guiding framework for sustainability progress and quantification of sustainability progress.
Most sustainable tourism certification programmes offer scaled fee structures as per business size, as well as guidance resources to assist the processes required to attain certification.
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Budget and mid-market hotels interested in achieving the greatest improvement at the lowest cost should focus their efforts to realise this objective through a favourable, low cost starting point, focusing efforts on “environmental” or “planet” considerations of the triple bottom line (people, planet and profit). Focusing on reducing resource use (energy, water and waste) can generate cost savings relatively quickly. Adopting best practices, such as the installation of LED bulbs, low flow fixtures and recycling and composting can generate significant cost savings in resource use, or ‘eco-savings’.
Businesses can even measure their resource use, reductions thereof, cost of installation of fixtures and practices and cost savings to determine their return on investment while monitoring sustainability progress. Various resources are available online free of charge that can assist this, for example, the Global Sustainable Tourism Council’s GSTC Criteria, which serve as global baseline standards for sustainable tourism development.
Ultimately, most guests still select hotels based on location, amenities, price, and reputation. At present, academic studies provide nominal evidence that tourists make purchasing decisions based on sustainability alone.
However, this situation is changing. The industry is taking measures to allow consumers to conveniently make purchasing decisions based upon providers’ sustainability practices.
For example TripAdvisor provides consumers the option to filter “green” accommodation providers as part of their search criteria to facilitate the selection of “green” accommodations.
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