Towards green guest houses in South Africa: the case of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal

Abstract

Tourists tend to have a large environmental impact, consuming substantial quantities of water, energy and other resources. As the primary supplier of these commodities, tourist accommodation establishments have the greatest potential to mitigate negative effects on the environment. Guest houses are becoming increasingly popular in South Africa, and due to their small scale and more contained capital costs, serve as the ideal starting point for greening initiatives. This study on the potential for greening guest houses within Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal demonstrates that the majority of interviewed guest house owners are aware of their impact on the environment, and are interested in mitigating these harms. The majority of them are not currently graded by any environmental certification programme. Attempts at greening guest houses are increasingly common, but progress in achieving the mitigation of environmental damage is slow. More academic attention is required to understand the initiatives to encourage greening in tourism accommodation generally in South Africa.

Keywords::

• guest houses
• Gauteng
• KwaZulu-Natal
• greening
• green-grading
• tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2. Email: [email protected]

^3. Questionnaires were also sent to guest houses in the Western Cape, but the poor response rate prevented the inclusion of the region in this study.

^4. The majority of guest houses in this study are three-star graded, and therefore comparisons between differently graded guest houses were not statistically significant.

^5. The biologically productive land coefficients required for calculation were based on the conversion of different resource or consumption components. The proportion of the consumption of a resource against the yield determines the amount of biologically productive land area required. Fossil fuel energy, land and water area are considered, with the equivalent factors of 1.57 and 0.22 respectively.