Sustainable practices and green competencies

Abstract

Hospitality industry especially hotels consumes lots of water, energy, generates tons of waste and ultimately leads to environmental degradation. In order to reduce the impact on environment hoteliers should implement and follow the sustainability practices and focus on the competencies related to sustainability. Hotel industry can play an important role towards sustainability of environment.So, it is an utmost and foremost responsibility of the hoteliers to implement sustainable practices in daily routines of their business. Acknowledging this very fact, the present study focuses on two dimensions i.e. Sustainability Practices and Green Competencies and tries to explore to the existing Sustainability practices and Green competencies exercised by category “A” hotels of Kashmir. Semi-structured interviews and checklists have been formulated based on which In-depth interview has been conducted from 20 respondents. The study concluded with the fact that, in order to implement sustainability practices the employees must be competent. The findings also revealed green competencies required for sustainability development that technical skills regarding energy management, energy assessment, Information technology skill, behavioral change and motivation, Communication, Project management Skills, facilitative leadership, ability to grasp legislation, analytical, problem-solving and decision-making skills, and understanding of environment and sustainability issues and good IT and general office skills