房间划分管理和环境可持续发展英文论文

房间划分管理和环境可持续发展英文论文

Abstract

This essay aims to describe and discuss the reasons why environmental management strategy is necessary for the tourism and hospitality industry, then give out ideas of the positive and negative impacts of implement environmental management, illustrate sustainable work practiced that hotels’ housekeeping department can implement, and analyze the impact that the environmental changes had on guests’ expectations on housekeeping department.

Reason of Implement Environmental Management Concept in the Hospitality Industry

Due to the vast development of various industries, a huge waste of water and electricity, massive emissions of greenhouse gases, and human destruction to the natural environment, the environment is deteriorating. To ensure environmental sustainability, not only for ourselves but also for our future offspring, it is necessary to implement environmental management and decrease negative environmental impacts.

Environmental management is a series of actions that reduce negative environmental impacts using technical and organizational activities (Myung, Kim, & Barrett, 2020). It is used to promotes the creation and development of pro-environmentally activities within the industries (Sergey et al., 2021). With the growth of the global tourism and hospitality industry, the negative impacts increased, such as the degradation of the biosphere, the destruction of coastal and mountain areas due to the construction of hotel buildings, parking areas, and entertainment infrastructures (Prud’homme & Raymond, 2013). Also, the economic activities of the tourism and hospitality industry increase the emission of greenhouse gases, which lead to climate change and damage the environment of tourism destinations (Wang & Wang, 2018).

The tourism and hospitality industry are blamed as the major driver of natural habitat loss and endangered species loss (Mohammed, 2018). In the daily operations of the tourism and hospitality industry, significant environmental pollution has been produced by consuming large amounts of energy, water, and disposable products (Prud’homme & Raymond, 2013). The waste disposal system is a serious problem in most of the tourist attractions and surrounding hotels, the ecosystem was seriously damaged due to the discharge of untreated sewage and solid waste (Mohammed, 2018).

The environmental degradation could trigger the negative feedback effect on the development of the tourism industry and their economic development. The unplanned and unchecked tourism development at many destinations leads to aesthetic damage of the attractions and landscapes (Mohammed, 2018). The number of tourists will be decreased as they refuse to go to the attractions that are environmentally destroyed, so that environmental management is an important issue, and the negative impacts should raise the awareness of the industry to attach great importance to environmental responsibility and implement sustainable practices. The environmental management system can be used as a solution to ensure the sustainable development of the tourism and hospitality industry.

Benefits of Environmental Management

The tourism and hospitality industry is very willing to protect the environment because attractive and natural surroundings can be seen as part of its core product (Chan, & Hsu, 2016). Developing environmental management in the industry can help to reduce the level of negative impacts of the industry on the natural environment (Sergey et al., 2021), and the companies in the industry can gain competitive advantages by physical higher economic benefits, and intangible benefits that their brand image and social reputation can be raised (Myung, Kim, & Barrett, 2020). The relationship between tourism and hospitality companies and local communities can also be improved with environmental management practices (Chan, 2009).

Also, environmental management can be used as a marketing tool in the tourism and hospitality industry. As a means of promoting and developing tourist destinations, environmental management can increase tourist attraction incentives, increase the concept of tourism, raise attraction impression and higher tourists’ expectations, with these factors, tourism-related hotels can be benefits in their economic stability, and tourists will be more willing to choose the hotel brand with pro-environmental management strategies (TZIORAS, 2018). In addition, applying environmental management in hotels can provide employment opportunities, the sustainable management policies may create more decent work for the employees to work at a hotel (Choy, Cheng, Yu, 2021).

In domestic and international destinations competition, a better environmental condition can bring a competitive edge for the destination’s surrounding tourism and hospitality industry (Huybers, Bennett, 2003). It has been pointed out by Blanco, Rey-Maquieira, and Lozano (2009) that the hotel occupancy rate is shown to be higher for those environmentally proactive hotels, and their profits are significantly higher, the financial performance can be positively influenced by the environmentally management policies of the hotels.

Negative Impacts of Environmental Management

With the process of the environmental management system, the cost of hotel operation will be higher, which negatively affects the companies’ competitive position (Huybers, Bennett, 2003). Compared to large hotels, smaller hotels have less human and financial resources to develop environmental management practices and implement pro-environmental infrastructures.

Some hotels may shape their sustainable behaviors to present a pro-environmental brand image to attract consumers based on their business environment and market concern regarding environmentally management needs (Fernández-Robin, Celemín-Pedroche, Santander-Astorga, & Alonso-Almeida, 2019), these hotels adopt environmentally management system as a superficial marketing tactic to attract guests and falsely claimed to be ecological friendly (Khatter et al., 2019), these behaviors deceive consumers and also disrupt the market.

Sometimes the malpractice amongst employees can also harm the implementation of environmental management and decrease the guests’ expectation of a sustainable hotel.For example, under the towel reuse policy of the hotel, the housekeeping staff changed all towels instead of only change towels on the floor and in the bathtub (Choy, Cheng, Yu, 2021). Without proper environmental training and communication, the employees’ ecological participation and engagement will be diminished.

The sustainable practices in hotels may result in guests’ negative impressions, although they appreciate the hotels which provide sustainable products and services to help protect the environment, they think the sustainable practices and services are unsanitary, uncomfortable, and inconvenience compared to other normal hotels so that they refuse to lose their living standards and comfort levels for the sake of environmental protection (Choy, Cheng, Yu, 2021).

Sustainable Work Practices to Reduce Negative Environmental Impacts

For the implementation of environmental management, sustainable work practices can be done in the hotels especially in the housekeeping department. Waste reduction management can be one of the measures of sustainable development, housekeeping department can decrease the use of disposable products, practicing recycling activities, sorting waste into the right bins, minimize the waste of paper and plastic bottles (Han, Chua, & Hyun, 2020).

Saving water is also a sustainable work practice to reduce negative environmental impacts for housekeeping. Use faucets with small streams of water, less water used so that the price paid for disposing of waste water will be reduced; avoid full-service room cleaning frequently to decrease the use of detergents and electricity, and also increasing the use life of linens (Choy, Cheng, Yu, 2021). When purchasing products, always choose local products, and lessen the use of the chemical products that harm the environment, such as use botanical cleansers and disinfectants in housekeeping. These natural products can prevent the intensification of water pollution as they don’t contain or release harmful substances to the environment.

Furthermore, improve the indoor air quality by using the filtration vacuum systems and removes most of the airborne particles, use recycled content paper products, and use microfiber mops to increase the efficiency of water. Also, an ozone laundry system can be used to decrease the amount of energy used, reducing drying time, and eliminating fabric softeners (Ecovison, 2012).

Environmental Changes Impacts on Guest Expectations and Housekeeping Management

Due to the environmental changes, hotel guests are paying more attention to hotels’ sustainable practices, and environmental management has emerged as an important determinant that influences guests’ attitudes and expectations (Olya, 2021). The guests expect to participate in environmentally sustainable activities and looking forward to having special living experiences with the hotels which have environmental management. With a sustainable operating strategy, the satisfaction rate and loyalty rate of the guests will be increased. When the hotel satisfies the guests’ expectations, it will gain their trust and positive attitudes towards the hotel.

For the expectations for the housekeeping department, the guests would expect the core of management to offset to sustainable practice, the managers should lay emphasis on how well the employees follow the management concepts of environmentally sustainability and call on the employees to contribute to environmental protection. The higher extent that the manager presents, the more sustainable practice will be realized by the employees. It is important for the housekeeping managers to make environmentally sustainable decisions, and to lead by example, to ensure the implementation of the environmental management throughout the department, so that the guests can feel it real about the truly sustainable strategy of the hotel.