Coastal resorts setting the pace: An evaluation of sustainable hotel practices

Abstract

The property development and hotel management industries are becoming active in adopting and operationalising sustainability practices. Despite this, empirical data that comprehensively describes and organises these practices are lacking from the literature (Weaver et al., 2013). This paper aims to address this by examining the sustainable hotel practices of Asia-Pacific hotels utilising green building certification programs as a lens to inductively content analyse self-reported award submissions. A total of 64 award submissions over a two year period were content analysed and over 594 sustainability practices were identified. The results were geographically differentiated between urban (n = 38), coastal (n = 19) and other (n = 7) locations. Urban located hotels reported the most number of sustainable practices (290), followed by coastal (247) and other hotels (57). However, coastal hotels averaged about twice as many sustainable practices per application (13.0) when compared against other (8.1) and urban hotels (7.6). Importantly, this research demonstrates that the role of sustainability practice adoption is an important consideration for coastal hotels and resorts. The paper concludes there is a need for greater integration between a scorecard approach to certification in building and hotel design and the self-reporting mechanisms of hotel award applications.