Opportunities in sustainability enablement of Indian industries: study of the hospitality industry

Abstract

Human activities have influenced the earth's eco-system for many thousands of years. The negative consequences of human activities are being seen in the recent times. Sustainability and Green Business practices have become buzz words across all the industries in the past few years. The practices related to being environmentally friendly, show casing corporate social responsibility as a response to the sustainability practices have been seen in the companies we work in. Being one of the larger industries in the world, the hospitality industry is an important contributor to these problems. Travel and tourism industry contributes to more than US$6.5 trillion activity, with about 10.3%of global GDP as per a World Tourism Report. An industry as big and internationally oriented as the hotels, motels and the various forms of accommodation comprise a large sector of the travel and tourism industry. It has been shown that the hotels have the highest negative influence on the environment of all the commercial buildings. According to estimations, an average hotel releases between 160 and 200 Kgs of Carbon-di-oxide per square meter of room floor area per year and water consumption per guest per night is between 170 and 440 litres in the average five star hotels. Considering this scale of activity, we venture to dig deeper into the level of awareness, involvement of green and sustainability initiatives in the hospitality industry by studying hotels of 4 star and 5 star rating in India and across the world, evaluate the level of maturity and attempt a comparison between the practices followed and propose a model which could be used to assess their current state. We have also looked at published research on the sustainability initiatives in the hospitality sector with which we have compared against our own findings. We have reached out to a few hotels in Bangalore of 4 star/ 5 star rating and also a couple of hotels in Mumbai for our study. We made use of a survey to gather inputs from these hotels in addition to interviewing personally where we were able to get some access. We have not been able to meet in person the customers of the hotels to understand their perspectives on such initiatives but we have collected information about such through online research.