Managers' Perceptions of Environmental Issues in Australian Hotels

Abstract

This article describes a study carried out among management staff of Australian hotels relating to their perceptions of environmental issues and the environmental practices of their hotels. The issues surveyed included environmental accreditation, costs and financial benefits of environmental programs, customer attitudes, ‘green’ corporate images and staff orientation towards environmental practices. Out of the 165 questionnaires sent to hotel management staff, sixty-five returns were received with sixty usable for this study. The findings showed that hotel managers generally agreed that environmental accreditation could be a potential tool for improving practices in hotels since they did not see any automatic financial benefits being serving environmental practices. Hotel managers perceived customers as being ambivalent towards the environment. But, importantly, they saw being environmentally friendly as providing a good corporate image in the wider community. This may have served as a major motivation for many hotels to adopt environmentally sensitive practices. In the selected areas of water and energy conservation and recycling, hotel managers indicated a high level of involvement of their hotels. This finding, that practices generally exceeded perceptions, was supportive of the suspicion that a ‘green’ corporate reputation was more important than actual practices.