ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

Environmental Management

Environmental Management

Introduction

The management of environment has become a very significant issue in the hotels. It has made the hotels to adopt strong practices for environmental management as a response to the increasing concern for the sustainability of the tourism products. The environmental management is an important and new aspect of the management that started in the 1980s and was adopted y majority of the hotels by 1990s. This increase in the adoption for the environmental management has been mainly due to the increasing issues over the effect of tourism on the environment.

Discussion

The hotel are the central hub of the tourism industry and it is that part of the tourism industry where the activities such as the cooking, landscaping, construction, waste of water and energy and the disposal of water affects the environment in an adverse manner when they are not managed properly. The various businesses in the service sector such as restaurants, resorts and hotels have some characteristics which affect the environment such as the customer involvement, labor intensity, heterogeneity and the time perishable capacity.

Environmental Management

It started in the form of initiatives of different activities and associations. In 1993, there were eleven different international hotels which accepted the manual spelling of the comprehensive campaign for advancing the environmental performance in the hospitality industry. There are many forms of environmental initiatives which are present but there is a lack of the common standards due to which the different initiatives are carried by the hotels themselves.

Ecolabelling

It has been used for encouraging the formation of environment friendly and less damaging hotels along with educating the customers. This concept in the hospitality and tourism industry refers to the promotion of a green and clear image. The hotel needs to be the member of a certain association or have gone through the certification program for using the logo (Mensah, 2004).

Certification

It is a process through which a writer assurance is given by the third party to the consumer of the service, process, product or the management system that it is conforming to the specified requirements. There are many national and international schemes which are available. ISO 14000 which was initially developed for manufacturing industry covers hotels also. It is focused on standardizing the life cycle assessments, labeling, evaluation, performance, audits and the practices of environment management.

There is a global certification program called the Green Globe 21 for addressing the sustainability ...