Tori Snoddy
Annotated Bibliography: Sustainability in the Hospitality Industry
ENC 1102 9/25/12
Introduction:
When looking through genres common to the field of Hospitality Management, I came across the topic of sustainability in the hospitality industry and continued studying the language and genre of my major by researching this topic more in depth via academic articles written by leaders in the industry. I found academic articles connecting to sustainability in the hospitality industry and looked for patterns and arguments common throughout the articles. Through my research, I have found sources that deal with international sustainability efforts in the hospitality industry (Gil-Saura, Moliner-Velázquez, Ruiz-Molina; Vukonik), some that discuss the importance of sustainability education (Barber, Deale, Goodman; Boley; Moreo, Demicco, Xiong), and others that converse about small business and local efforts in sustainability in the hospitality industry (O’Neill, Alonso; Richins, Scarinci).
Barber, Nelson, Cynthia Deale and Raymond Goodman. Environmental Sustainability in the Hospitality Management Curriculum: . 11 March 2011. 30 September 2012.
Barber, Deale, and Goodman, authors of the 2011 academic article “Environmental Sustainability in the Hospitality Management Curriculum,” claim that because sustainability has become a growing demand in the hospitality industry, sustainable development needs to be incorporated into management education more than ever. They support this claim by collecting data from three large stakeholder groups in the hospitality industry on their interest in sustainability, which proved that these stakeholders all support and expect the industry to make a movement toward going green and educating management on it. Their purpose was to show that sustainability needs to be incorporated into management development in order to keep the industry market from decreasing and to keep stakeholders happy. The intended audience of this article is management companies in the hospitality industry, as well as training companies, HR departments, and large names in the industry that are looking to increase profits and make a move toward sustainability.
Barber, Deale, and Goodman’s article is relevant to my topic because it discusses the importance of educating the hospitality industry on the importance and the how-to of incorporating sustainability into the hospitality industry. Stating, “Sustainability in terms of the environment has been incorporated into many university communities’ operations and into numerous degree programs, such as in engineering, business, and architecture, however, sustainability appears to be receiving scant attention in hospitality management degree programs in the United States: these programs educate future operations and financial managers in hospitality who will ultimately grapple with the triple bottom line of sustainability issues,” meaning that out of all the degrees that are educated on sustainability, hospitality is equally important because at the end of the day, the students now will be the managers who are dealing with the escalated issue at some point in the future. This article relates to Boley’s article “Towards an Integrated Curriculum,” which also discusses the importance of integrating sustainability into the Hospitality curriculum.
Boley, B. Bynum. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education . July 2003. Academic Journal. 10 September 2012.
Bymun Boley, author of the 2003 academic journal “Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism Education: Towards an Integrated Curriculum” asserts that in order for the Hospitality industry to be competitive and for students to be prepared to tackle the challenges of the 21st Century, the principles of sustainability need to be taught within institutes of higher learning. Boley supports this assertion by discussing different methods for incorporating sustainability into a school’s curriculum, and highlighting the benefits of integrating sustainability across the curriculum rather than solely teaching it in a specific class, assigning it to a specific major, or leaving it up to the discretion of the instructor. His purpose is to inform his audience about how critical it is to educate today’s college students on sustainability in order for students to be prepared to handle the effects of sustainability once they are part of the workforce. Boley’s intended audience is professors/educators, as well as hospitality management who wants to be informed on the current education.
Boley’s article is related to my topic because it converses about the need to educate future members of the hospitality workforce. Like Barber, Deale, and Goodman’s article, it discusses the importance of education, but the difference is Boley talks about educating at the college level while Barber, etc. talks about educating management that is already in place. Boley says “It is certainly important to teach students from a variety of perspectives about sustainability to lessen hospitality and tourism’s negative impacts and maximize its positive impacts in general, but more specifically teaching sustainability is important because a destination’s natural and cultural resources are tremendously strategic resources,” which shows that he is concerned about not only the economic standpoint of sustainability, but also the protecting the environment.
Gil-Saura, Irene, Maria-Eugenia Ruiz-Molina and Beatriz Moliner-Velázquez. Good Environmental Practices for Hospitality and Tourism . 2 March 2010. web. 30 September 2012.
Gil-Saura, Ruiz-Molina, and Moliner-Velazquez, authors of 2010 article “Good Environmental Practices for Hospitality and Tourism,” discuss several proposals to pursue environmental sustainability of tourism activities and minimize the impact on climate change. They support this discussion by providing world-wide, not just local, data showing in-house energy usage/output and how big certain hotel’s carbon footprints are compared to others. Since the article is from a national journal, you get more insight into energy usage world-wide. Their purpose for writing this academic article is to inform hospitality industry professionals of different appliances and their energy usage so they can make more informed decisions on how to keep their hotel’s carbon footprint small. The intended audience is hospitality industry professionals- managers, CEOs, etc, as well as financing departments and anyone looking to make their hotel’s footprint shrink.
This article is related to my topic because it promotes sustainability in the hospitality industry by providing information on different appliances used in the industry and which ones would be most energy efficient. It also deals with international sustainability efforts like Vukonic’s article “Can sustainability be questioned?” Ruiz-Molina states, “customers appreciate environmentally friendly efforts at tourism businesses, for example composting toilet systems, energy efficient systems, recycling programs, renewable energy systems, gray-water systems, items made of recycled materials, items made from natural/organic materials, water use reduction programs,” which are all things that the article discusses when showing energy usuage.
Demicco, Frederick, Moreo, Andrew, and Lina Xiong. The Hospitality Environmental Scorecard . 6 March 2009. web. 28 September 2012.
Demicco, Morio, and Xiong, authors of the 2009 academic article “The Hospitality
Enviromental Scorecard,” sought to develop a tool called the Environmental
Scorecard (ESC) with which managers, executives, board members, and share holders, could quantify the environmental and financial impact of the company as a whole, as well as specific environmental initiatives undertaken by the company. They support this development by first offering data such as “flight produces somewhere from 2% to 3% of greenhouse emissions, but only half of that is related to travel and tourism,” and then go into the effects of tourism, and finished with the scorecard and how it can be used. Their purpose is to provide managers, etc. with a tool to measure their impact on the environment. They clearly state that their audience is managers, executives, board members, and shareholders.
This articles ties perfectly into my topic because it not only discusses the importance of sustainability by providing accurate data, but also gives professionals a way to track their output and financial input on the environment. This also relates to Boley’s and Barber’s articles which deal with education on sustainability, as well as Ruiz-Molina’s because it discusses scenarios and cases all over the world having to do with lack of sustainability. They all share the want to educate people already part of the industry on sustainability, how to track it, and how to increase it. An example of the international efforts discusses is “The Great Barrier Reef, the country’s most important natural attraction, brings in nearly one-fourth of that income and supports some 800 tour operators. In recent years, high ocean temperatures have begun to kill the corals that make up the reef. In 2002, 60% of the reef area examined was bleached; that is, the coral was dead or dying.” This shows how important taking care of the environment is to the hospitality industry.
O'neill, Martin, Alonso, Duarte. Small Hospitality Business Involvement . 30 August 2012. 28 September 2012.
O’Neill and Alonso, authors of the 2012 “Small Hospitality Business Involvement,” assert that consumers are now demanding goods and services produced by environmentally friendly means, as well as local. O’Neill and Alonso support this assertion by first discussing the Tourism/nature relationship, then explaining the hospitality industry response, followed by data physically showing responses to the relationship. Their purpose is to show that small hospitality business has just as much effect on the environment as large business do, and that local is affected just as much as well. Also, small business is often overlooked so it is important to keep up with sustainability in any sort of business. Their audience is small business owners looking to increase sustainability on a local level.
This article is relevant to my topic because it discusses sustainability in the hospitality industry, but just on a local, small business level, instead of large chain hotels and industrial parts of hospitality. O’Neill states, “The small and medium-sized business sector is largely ignorant of its environmental impacts . . . oblivious of the importance of sustainability, cynical of the benefits of self-regulation . . . difficult to reach, mobilize or engage in any improvements to do with the environment.” This is showing that there needs to be great improvement in the small business area of the industry because they are having an equally large effect on the industry. This article also relates to Richin’s article “A Case Study of the Resort industry in Florida” because it also discusses a local industry and its effects.
Richins, Harlod and Janice Scarinci. A Case Study of the Resort Industry in Florida . August 2009. 28 September 2012.
Richins and Scarinci, authors of the 2009 academic article, “A Case Study of the Resort Industry in Florida” assert that on an economic scale, changes in climate may have a profound impact on tourism flows between and within various regions throughout the world, or more specifically Florida, whose economy greatly depends on hospitality and tourism. This assertion is supported by Richins and Scarinci giving data about the industry such as “hospitality is the second largest employer in the United States after healthcare, with a total average spending of close to $1.8 billion a day in the United States and over $654 billion in domestic airline revenue,” and goes on to speak more specifically of Florida and the effects global warming can have on its economy. Their purpose in writing this article is to talk about the impending consequences of our negative actions toward our environment and how it could affect Florida specifically. Their audience is mainly management of the industry in Florida, but could extend to management world-wide.
This article is relevant to my topic because it not only discusses sustainability in the industry as a whole, but specifically Florida. It covers local sustainability, as well as worldwide and relates to a number of other articles such as Ruiz-Molina and O’Neill. Richins states, “The lodging sector, which represents a large section of the tourism and hospitality industry, purchases many products and services that directly and indirectly affect the environment. The process of production and distribution of these products contribute to energy production and CO2 emissions, the major contributor to climate change,” which is exactly why Florida is in danger of jeopardizing their industry. This shows that it is important to increase sustainability all over the world.
Vukoni?, Boris. Can Sustainability be Questioned? 1 June 2010. 28 September 2012.
Vukonic, author of 2010 academic article “Can Sustainability be questioned?” states that sustainable tourism is somewhat of an oxymoron. He says that even though some tourism is meant to preserve things such as national parks, etc., it is still creating human traffic through these once pristine areas and leads to the destruction of them, so there truly is no such thing as sustainable tourism. He supports this statement by outlining the many different types of sustainable tourism, then explaining how human intrusion has effected each situation. He ends by showing a “before and after” scenario in each case. His purpose in writing this is to show the negative effects of sustainable tourism and how it effects our environment. His audience is any management or shareholders in sustainable tourism, because it shows them the effects of what they are doing to the environment.
This article is relevant to my topic because it discusses how sustainable tourism affects the environment, and also how it does so. It also relates to Ruiz-Molina since it puts the effects on a global scale, and Ruiz talks about international effects. He states, “In modern international tourism, no spectacularly good global examples of sustainable tourism have appeared so far. However, at a micro level, at the level of smaller spatial entities and localities, there are numerous good examples, including the EAST project in Jamaica, The Green Business Scheme in Scotland, the Waitomo adventure programmes in New Zealand, Vias Verdes in Spain,” which clearly shows that he is talking world-wide, and also shows that there is very few examples of “good” sustainable tourism.