Water management practices in Euro-Mediterranean hotels and resorts

ABSTRACT

The Mediterranean region, which is one of the world’s leading tourist destinations, is vulnerable to climate change and impacted by human water demand. Tourism is recognized as a major water-consuming sector, and the growth in tourism establishments has been matched by a growth in water demand. Hotels represent the highest water consumption rates in the tourist sector. In this study, a survey was carried out in the Mediterranean region. Responses from 80 hotels of different categories and countries were gathered, discussed and compared regarding water supply, water consumption and monitoring, water-saving strategies, and environmental awareness and willingness for future improvements.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental awareness
• survey
• tourism
• water reuse
• water-saving measures
• water supply

CrediT authorship contribution statement

E.M.: Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, supervision. G.F.: Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. Y.M.S.: Conceptualization, investigation, methodology, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. X.A.: Writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. A.A.: Methodology, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing. G.B.: Conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Esther Mendoza is thankful for the predoctoral grant from the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR – Agency for Management of University and Research Grants) [grant number 2020FI_B 00749] co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF). Gianluigi Buttiglieri acknowledges the Ramon y Cajal Research Fellowship [grant number RYC-2014-16754] and the CLEaN-TOUR project [grant number CTM2017-85385-C2-1-R] from the Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness). The authors acknowledge the support from the Economy and Knowledge Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) through a Consolidated Research Group – Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA) [grant number 2017-SGR-1318]. The ICRA researchers are thankful for funding from the CERCA Program, Generalitat de Catalunya. This study was partially funded under the 7th Framework Program (FP7) of the European Union (demEAUmed) [grant agreement number 619116].