The Greener the Hotel, the Better Operating Efficiency It Has? A Sustainable Tourism Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this study was mainly to analyze the operating efficiency of Green Hotels during the epidemic, and to explore whether hotels that pay more attention to green energy and saving energy would be more economically efficient. The object of this study is the top 20 Green Hotels voted on the European Union Internet Forum from 2018 to 2022. According to the empirical results, all Green Hotels were affected by COVID-19, and their operating efficiency became worse. This study further used Tobit regression to find out the factors that affect the operating efficiency, and performs regression analysis on the efficiency values of the green energy environment variables. The findings showed that the green energy equipment of EU-certified Green Hotels had a negative effect on the operating efficiency, with a coefficient value of −0.362, indicating that the investment in green energy equipment cannot be achieved in a short period of time. In addition, the education level of managers and hotel green energy licenses have positive effects on the operating efficiency of Green Hotels. In particular, when the Green Hotel licenses are the most important, they have the highest coefficient value of the efficiency of Green Hotels at 0.484. This means that the higher the education level of Green Hotel managers and the higher the level of the Green Hotel license, the higher the operating efficiency. These findings suggest that Green Hotel management should pay attention to its green certificate level and the education knowledge of managers, so as to achieve sustainable energy saving and to improve operating efficiency.