Abstract
The fast growing hospitality industry is responsible for various detrimental impacts on the environment through the excessive use of natural resources. An effective way for hotels to minimise their impact on the environment, has been identified through the implementation of greening practices. However, studies show that many South African hotels have not made changes towards greening practices with limited academic literature exploring the challenges, which are associated with greening the hotel sector. It is also unclear what government legislation and private certification programs are in place to guide hotels towards greening and sustainability. This study aims to narrow the knowledge gap by providing evidence of the challenges that are associated with greening hotels in Gauteng, South Africa. Furthermore, the study adds to the limited literature on greening hotels in the Global South. By way of empirical investigation, this study gathered perceptions from key stakeholders from national government, national and international hotels, and the private sector as means to explore the importance of greening hotels for each stakeholder individually, and for collaboration between stakeholders towards greening, including governance issues surrounding the greening of hotels. Data for this qualitative study was obtained through a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, which were conducted with fifteen hotels in Gauteng, as well as interviews with the National Department of Tourism, Fair Trade Tourism, the Sustainable Tourism Partnership Programme and the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa. The researcher observed three hotels, while secondary data was added to the interview responses. Results indicate that the challenges that hotels experience when implementing greening initiatives include high initial costs of implementation, inability to control guest consumption and behaviour, inconsistent criteria used when certifying green hotels and the lack of communication and support provided by local municipalities and national government to support hotels during the implementation of greening initiatives. Results further indicate that using the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa as a vehicle to regulate and enforce greening practices could be a viable solution for the many challenges that are currently experienced. Although the implementation of greening practices can provide the main benefit of greater financial savings for hotels, especially in the long run, this is mainly made possible through the financial support and drive received from hotel groups; however, further support and enforcement is required from national and provincial government to improve greening practices.
M.A.