An environmental performance assessment of the hotel industry using an ecological footprint

ABSTRACT

An environmental performance assessment of the hotel

industry using an ecological footprint

                                                By :  Han-Shen Chen  and  Tsuifang Hsieh

         Environmental management research on the hotel industry has touched little upon the topic of environmental performance assessment. This study uses ecological footprint models to assess natural resource consumption in the hotel industry and the burden it puts on the environment.
Findings of the study indicated that: (1) As the star rating goes up, hotels tend to consume greater amounts of resources, leave larger ecological footprints and have greater impacts on the environment; (2) Consumption categories in the order of the size of their ecological footprints are food, energy, construction land, textile and waste; (3) The types of biologically productive land used in accounting for the geological footprint in order of size are fossil fuel land, cropland, grazing land, water area, construction land, and forest land; (4) As the ratings of hotels go up, the contribution of the catering sector to the total ecological footprint shrinks while that of accommodation increases; (5) The higher the star rating of a hotel, the larger the average ecological footprint of per bed.

Key words: Ecological footprint, hotel industry, environmental management,             performance evaluation

MINI SKRIPSI

AN ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF THE HOTEL INDUSTRY USING AN ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

 

Oleh :

        

        

M. Al-faizul Ilmi

201110320311032

        

JURUSAN KEHUTANAN

FAKULTAS PERTANIAN PETERNAKAN

UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG

2013

Introduction

            According to statistics provided by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the world tourist industry is growing at an annual rate of 4%. Participation of the industry in the economy has become a global trend. However, as the tourist industry flourishes, those activities have also created environmental impact issues, such as traffic congestion, over- exploitation of natural resources, and issues created by inappropriate tourist behaviors. Apart from the effects on human, natural, and culture heritages, these create a lot of pollution (Wu,2003).

            With the ongoing rise of environmental protection philosophies, "green consumption" is gradually from being a mere concept into real action. The hotel and restaurant industries, in particular, are closely related to environmental protection (Kuo, 2000). The International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and Green Hotels Association, founded in 1992 and 1993, respectively, hold that green hotels or the management of such hotels should hold to the saving of water and energy and reducing unnecessary waste (International Hotels Environment Initiative, 1995; Green Hotels Association, 2004).

            Apart from the steadily increasing number of hotel buildings consequential to the development of tourism, huge amounts of water are required to meet the need of hotel guests. In terms of energy, electricity alone constitutes 70.8% of the energy consumption in hotels (Kuo et al., 2005).  A survey conducted by the CTCI Foundation (2004) on 84 hotels showed that hotels account for 0.32% of the total electricity consumption in Taiwan. All such data indicate that the hotel industry is a major consumer of both water and energy resources. Further, the Fourth Climate Change Assessment Report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,2007) shows that the “commercial residential construction" sector has the biggest potential for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Therefore, cost reduction through more thorough environment management measures and energy saving should be the goal of hotel managers everywhere in the 21 century (Frabotta, 1999).

            To sum up, the existing research concerning the ecological footprint of the hotel industry is still unsystematic and incomplete. The research does not examine the hotel industry alone as a subject of study, thus rendering only rather rough calculation results and analyses. For this reason, this paper attempts to use the ecological footprint calculation model and structural analysis approach and assess the consumption of natural resources by the hotel industry. It also uses the model to examine the load the consumption puts on the environment, and thereby provides theoretical support as well as specific practical recommendations for environmental management and sustainability of the hotel industry.

LITERATURE REVIEW : The ecological footprint theory

            The ecological footprint model was proposed by a Canadian ecological economist, William Rees, in 1992, and it became gradually complete after being improved by relevant researches (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Wackernagel et al., 2004 a, b). EF uses corresponding biological productive land to estimate the resource consumption and waste absorption area of a specific population or economy. Wackernagel and Rees (1996) believe that the size of ecological footprints is the direct proportion of environmental impact, the larger the ecological footprint the larger the environmental impact; the size of ecological footprints is the inverse proportion of biological productive land per person, the larger the ecological footprint the smaller the biological productive land per person. The calculation of ecological footprints can measure the different types of biological productive land (and water) a specific population requires to support its energy and resource consumption and to absorb the waste it produces.

            If countries, regions and cities can monitor load capacity and ecological footprint each year and announce GDP at the same time, they will be able to understand economic trends and ecological changes, implementing nature conservation and sustainable development concepts into the society’s overall operation and feedback mechanism, and further providing a judgment standard and action direction for the future of mankind.

            Having advantages such as easy and comprehensive approach, lively expression and comparable outcome etc, ecological footprint can be adopted as an assessment indicator of sustainable development of ecology. At present, directions in the research of ecological footprint mainly consist of balance factors, rational adjustment of output factors(Erb, 2004; Venetoulis and Talberth, 2008), increase of syndrome count accounts(Jenerette and Larsen, 2006), computation of greenhouse emission (Lenzen et al., 2007; McGregor et al., 2008), calculation of ecological footprint of environmental pollution(Song et al., 2005; Bai et al., 2008), time sequence footprint model (van Vuuren and Bouwman, 2005; Wackernagel et.al., 2004a, b; Yue et al., 2006), footprint model combining context model(Senbel et al., 2003; van Vuuren and Bouwman, 2005), input-output footprint model(Bicknell et al., 1998; McGregor et al., 2008; Moran et al., 2008; Sánchez-Chóliz et al., 2006), life cycle footprint model(Monfreda et al., 2004), footprint model combining energy analysis (Chen and Chen, 2007; Zhao et al., 2005) and land interference footprint model(Lenzen and Murray, 2001; Lenzen et al., 2007) etc.

           

            The above models have promoted and developed the theories and calculation method of ecological footprint in different levels. However, the accuracy and completeness of the computation of ecological footprint still need further improvement. Many literatures have explored the theoretical hypotheses, basic concepts, calculating methods, empirical applications and deficiency improvements of ecological footprint model, so this paper will not go further on these topics here. (Chen and Chen, 2007; Cuadra and Bjrklund, 2007; Gu et al., 2007; Li et al., 2008; Nguyen and Yamamoto, 2007; Turner et al., 007; Wiedmann and Manfred, 2007; Wiedmann et al., 2007; Zhang and Zhang, 2007).

            Wackernagel and Yount (1998) show that the tourism industry accounts for 10% of the world’s total ecological footprint. Murray Mas (2000) analyzed the environmental impact of tourist activities in Balears, Spain, in an attempt to construct a time sequence for local ecological footprint.

Hunter (2002) was the first to put forward the concept of tourist ecological footprint, its categorization, and its application to the sustainable development of tourism. Gössling et al. (2002) then constructed an ecological footprint calculation model for tourist destinations, using Seychelles, Africa, as its example. A study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, 2002) shows that one same vacation product generates three times the per capital ecological footprint in Cyprus as it does in Majorca; therefore, Majorca is obviously a better choice than Cyprus for a vacation. Cole and Sinclair (2002) conducted an analysis of the ecological footprint of tourists in the Indian Himalayas and discuss in their paper strategies for sustainable development in the future; these include waste processing, reducing fossil fuel consumption, developing ecotourism and instilling environmental awareness among tourists. Johnson (2003) analyzed and compared the tourist consumption of biological resources in Lake Ontario. Bagliani et al. (2004) calculated the ecological footprint of Venice, presenting findings that suggest that tourism is an important contributor to the expansion of a city's ecological footprint. Using ecological footprint standards, Pattersona et al. (2007) conducted an analysis of the environmental pressures that local residents and tourists put on the local area and on the global environment. Based on that information, they discuss the topics of biological efficiency and fair trading between communities in order for them to be informed on policy-making regarding tourism.

           

            These aforesaid empirical research studies touched little on the topic of environmental performance assessment. Gössling et al. (2002) in their research on tourist ecological footprint in Seychelles points out that the ecological footprints pertaining to accommodation include those related to the use of construction land and from energy consumption. They calculate construction land use and energy consumption (per bed night in MJs (heat of combustion) identify) of various types of accommodations to provide important reference data for later research. Pattersona et al. (2008) point out that the ecological footprint of the accommodation sector also comes from water and waste disposal. These researches thus treat accommodation as an element of tourist activities. Further, catering is singled out and put aside, thus neglecting to examine the comprehensiveness of the overall hotel businesses operations in lodging, food and beverage and entertainment facilities.

            To sum up, the existing literature on the ecological footprint of hotels is unsystematic and incomplete and fails to treat hotels as a stand-alone subject of study, thus as an outcome, rendering only rough calculations and analyses. It is, therefore, necessary to undertake further research in greater detail to render precise conclusions on the EF of hotels that are more convincing and provide a more exact reference for future studies.

METHODOLOGY

            Based on the literature review above, we construct a calculation model by consumption categories as shown in Figure 1. The model has six parts: Food, energy, textile, paper, waste, and construction land. Various resource or energy consumption items are converted into biologically productive land areas. There are six basic types of biologically productive land: Cropland, grazing land, forestland, construction land, fossil energy resource land, and water (marine) area. Since biocapacity varies with land types, the biologically productive land area figures must be converted to reflect the same biocapacity before being totaled. In other words, the ratio between the consumption of a certain type of goods and the yield per unit of such goods on a certain type of land is the biologically productive land area required for that type of land. Multiply the figure by the corresponding equivalent factor, and we have the required area for this type of land under local or international standards.

The EF of Hotels (The framework of the ecological footprint of hotels).
Food	Energy	Textile	Paper products	Waste disposal	Construction land
Cropland/ forest land/ water area/ grazing land	Fossil energy resource land	Cropland	Forest land	Fossil energy resource land	Use Built-up land

See Formula :

EFi = Qi / Pi × Ei

Wherein:

EFi: represents the ecological footprint of a certain category, normally expressed in units of global             hectares (ghm2).

Qi: represents the total consumption of a certain type of goods, normally expressed in units of             kilograms (kg) or tons (t).

Pi: represents the world average yield of this type of goods, normally expressed in units of             kilograms/hectare (kg/hm2).

Ei: is the equivalent factor for the type of the land which produces .this type of goods. And, the             value of the coefficient varies with land type.

1.    Calculation of the ecological footprint of energy consumption

2.    Calculation of the ecological footprint of food consumption

3.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for waste disposal

4.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for paper products

5.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for textile products

6.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for construction land use

7.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for hotels

8.    Calculation of the average ecological footprint per bed per night.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

            This study assesses empirically the environmental performance of the hotel industry in Taiwan. A performance assessment model is built on the basis of the afore-described ecological footprint method. The environmental performance of the hotels is then reviewed by examining the overall assessment values.

1.    Subject of the assessment and the assessment approach

2.    Parameters of the calculation

3.    Specs of goods

4.    Conversion ratios for consumption

5.    Calculation and analysis of the ecological footprint

6.    Analyzing the aggregate ecological footprint of hotels

7.    Analyzing the demand for land typed

8.    Analyzing the ecological footprint for food consumption

9.    Analyzing the ecological footprint for energy consumption

10. Analyzing the ecological footprint for catering and accommodation sectors of hotels

11. A comparative analysis

12. The accommodations sector analysis

13. The ecological footprint of hotels analysis

            In the studies of Majorca and Cyprus, hotels waste disposal is the biggest contributor to the ecological footprint of these hotels. WWF (2002) statistics show that hotels in these two areas produce 4.3 and 9.87 kg of waste per bed per night. Peeters and Schouten (2006) are skeptical about that finding. In our study, waste includes sewage, food waste, textile scrap, and waste paper. The amount of food waste is obtained through a mathematics conversion based on a 5% disposal rate. The estimation of the total waste amount is “conservative” and significantly lower than those recorded for the hotels in Majorca and Cyprus. However, even if we base our calculation on an annual waste amount of 500 tons, the variation in the per bed per night ecological footprint is between just 0.0005 and 0.001, still too small to bring the results up to the level of the hotels in Cyprus. What it does, however, is change the overall composition of the ecological footprint of the hotel-- the order between consumption categories of their contribution to the total ecological footprint change from food, energy, textile and waste to food, energy, waste and textile.

RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

            Overall, the higher the star rating, the more resources a hotel consumes and the greater are its ecological footprint and environmental impacts. In the order of the size of their respective ecological footprints, the consumption categories that constitute the ecological footprint calculation model for hotels developed in this study are food, energy, construction land, textile, and waste. The contribution of food to the total ecological footprint decreases as the star ratings of hotels rises. The

contribution of energy consumption, in contrast, increases as the star ratings of hotels go up.

            This study tries to illustrate, through ecological footprint calculation and analysis, the consumptions involved in objects or activities and the impacts these have on the environment. The hope is to improve ecological awareness among hotel operators and users. Based on the findings of the study, we make the following recommendations:

1.    Taiwan is experiencing a weak economy currently. By implementing environmental performance management systems, the hotel industry can cope with this situation better through energy saving and expense reduction and achieve effective cost reductions.

2.    Hotels should endeavor to enhance employee recognition of the green management concept, develop employee-training guidebooks on green management, educate employees regularly and enhance employee recognition regarding the value of green hotels. Only by making these changes can hotels build real environmental competitiveness.

3.    Hotel managers, when taking certain measures to implement environmental performance management systems, may consider giving guests discounts appropriate to increase the willingness of guests to become involved and eliminate ongoing resistance against the implementation of environmental management systems.

4.    Part of any environmental management system may involve activities that require considerable funding, example, the building of a water- cooling and recycling system. Hotel managers may find it to be beyond their capacity at times. Therefore, we suggest that the government offer tax rebates or tax exemption schemes or other favorable conditions that encourages hotel management to increase their desire to implement environmental management systems appropriately and consistently throughout the entire hotel industry.

REFERENCES :

Han-Shen Chen and Tsuifang Hsieh ,2011.AABSTRACT

An environmental performance assessment of the hotel

industry using an ecological footprint

                                                By :  Han-Shen Chen  and  Tsuifang Hsieh

         Environmental management research on the hotel industry has touched little upon the topic of environmental performance assessment. This study uses ecological footprint models to assess natural resource consumption in the hotel industry and the burden it puts on the environment. Findings of the study indicated that: (1) As the star rating goes up, hotels tend to consume greater amounts of resources, leave larger ecological footprints and have greater impacts on the environment; (2) Consumption categories in the order of the size of their ecological footprints are food, energy, construction land, textile and waste; (3) The types of biologically productive land used in accounting for the geological footprint in order of size are fossil fuel land, cropland, grazing land, water area, construction land, and forest land; (4) As the ratings of hotels go up, the contribution of the catering sector to the total ecological footprint shrinks while that of accommodation increases; (5) The higher the star rating of a hotel, the larger the average ecological footprint of per bed.

Key words: Ecological footprint, hotel industry, environmental management,             performance evaluation

MINI SKRIPSI

AN ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF THE HOTEL INDUSTRY USING AN ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

 

Oleh :

        

        

M. Al-faizul Ilmi

201110320311032

        

JURUSAN KEHUTANAN

FAKULTAS PERTANIAN PETERNAKAN

UNIVERSITAS MUHAMMADIYAH MALANG

2013

Introduction

            According to statistics provided by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the world tourist industry is growing at an annual rate of 4%. Participation of the industry in the economy has become a global trend. However, as the tourist industry flourishes, those activities have also created environmental impact issues, such as traffic congestion, over- exploitation of natural resources, and issues created by inappropriate tourist behaviors. Apart from the effects on human, natural, and culture heritages, these create a lot of pollution (Wu,2003).

            With the ongoing rise of environmental protection philosophies, "green consumption" is gradually from being a mere concept into real action. The hotel and restaurant industries, in particular, are closely related to environmental protection (Kuo, 2000). The International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and Green Hotels Association, founded in 1992 and 1993, respectively, hold that green hotels or the management of such hotels should hold to the saving of water and energy and reducing unnecessary waste (International Hotels Environment Initiative, 1995; Green Hotels Association, 2004).

            Apart from the steadily increasing number of hotel buildings consequential to the development of tourism, huge amounts of water are required to meet the need of hotel guests. In terms of energy, electricity alone constitutes 70.8% of the energy consumption in hotels (Kuo et al., 2005).  A survey conducted by the CTCI Foundation (2004) on 84 hotels showed that hotels account for 0.32% of the total electricity consumption in Taiwan. All such data indicate that the hotel industry is a major consumer of both water and energy resources. Further, the Fourth Climate Change Assessment Report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,2007) shows that the “commercial residential construction" sector has the biggest potential for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Therefore, cost reduction through more thorough environment management measures and energy saving should be the goal of hotel managers everywhere in the 21 century (Frabotta, 1999).

            To sum up, the existing research concerning the ecological footprint of the hotel industry is still unsystematic and incomplete. The research does not examine the hotel industry alone as a subject of study, thus rendering only rather rough calculation results and analyses. For this reason, this paper attempts to use the ecological footprint calculation model and structural analysis approach and assess the consumption of natural resources by the hotel industry. It also uses the model to examine the load the consumption puts on the environment, and thereby provides theoretical support as well as specific practical recommendations for environmental management and sustainability of the hotel industry.

LITERATURE REVIEW : The ecological footprint theory

            The ecological footprint model was proposed by a Canadian ecological economist, William Rees, in 1992, and it became gradually complete after being improved by relevant researches (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Wackernagel et al., 2004 a, b). EF uses corresponding biological productive land to estimate the resource consumption and waste absorption area of a specific population or economy. Wackernagel and Rees (1996) believe that the size of ecological footprints is the direct proportion of environmental impact, the larger the ecological footprint the larger the environmental impact; the size of ecological footprints is the inverse proportion of biological productive land per person, the larger the ecological footprint the smaller the biological productive land per person. The calculation of ecological footprints can measure the different types of biological productive land (and water) a specific population requires to support its energy and resource consumption and to absorb the waste it produces.

            If countries, regions and cities can monitor load capacity and ecological footprint each year and announce GDP at the same time, they will be able to understand economic trends and ecological changes, implementing nature conservation and sustainable development concepts into the society’s overall operation and feedback mechanism, and further providing a judgment standard and action direction for the future of mankind.

            Having advantages such as easy and comprehensive approach, lively expression and comparable outcome etc, ecological footprint can be adopted as an assessment indicator of sustainable development of ecology. At present, directions in the research of ecological footprint mainly consist of balance factors, rational adjustment of output factors(Erb, 2004; Venetoulis and Talberth, 2008), increase of syndrome count accounts(Jenerette and Larsen, 2006), computation of greenhouse emission (Lenzen et al., 2007; McGregor et al., 2008), calculation of ecological footprint of environmental pollution(Song et al., 2005; Bai et al., 2008), time sequence footprint model (van Vuuren and Bouwman, 2005; Wackernagel et.al., 2004a, b; Yue et al., 2006), footprint model combining context model(Senbel et al., 2003; van Vuuren and Bouwman, 2005), input-output footprint model(Bicknell et al., 1998; McGregor et al., 2008; Moran et al., 2008; Sánchez-Chóliz et al., 2006), life cycle footprint model(Monfreda et al., 2004), footprint model combining energy analysis (Chen and Chen, 2007; Zhao et al., 2005) and land interference footprint model(Lenzen and Murray, 2001; Lenzen et al., 2007) etc.

           

            The above models have promoted and developed the theories and calculation method of ecological footprint in different levels. However, the accuracy and completeness of the computation of ecological footprint still need further improvement. Many literatures have explored the theoretical hypotheses, basic concepts, calculating methods, empirical applications and deficiency improvements of ecological footprint model, so this paper will not go further on these topics here. (Chen and Chen, 2007; Cuadra and Bjrklund, 2007; Gu et al., 2007; Li et al., 2008; Nguyen and Yamamoto, 2007; Turner et al., 007; Wiedmann and Manfred, 2007; Wiedmann et al., 2007; Zhang and Zhang, 2007).

            Wackernagel and Yount (1998) show that the tourism industry accounts for 10% of the world’s total ecological footprint. Murray Mas (2000) analyzed the environmental impact of tourist activities in Balears, Spain, in an attempt to construct a time sequence for local ecological footprint.

Hunter (2002) was the first to put forward the concept of tourist ecological footprint, its categorization, and its application to the sustainable development of tourism. Gössling et al. (2002) then constructed an ecological footprint calculation model for tourist destinations, using Seychelles, Africa, as its example. A study by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, 2002) shows that one same vacation product generates three times the per capital ecological footprint in Cyprus as it does in Majorca; therefore, Majorca is obviously a better choice than Cyprus for a vacation. Cole and Sinclair (2002) conducted an analysis of the ecological footprint of tourists in the Indian Himalayas and discuss in their paper strategies for sustainable development in the future; these include waste processing, reducing fossil fuel consumption, developing ecotourism and instilling environmental awareness among tourists. Johnson (2003) analyzed and compared the tourist consumption of biological resources in Lake Ontario. Bagliani et al. (2004) calculated the ecological footprint of Venice, presenting findings that suggest that tourism is an important contributor to the expansion of a city's ecological footprint. Using ecological footprint standards, Pattersona et al. (2007) conducted an analysis of the environmental pressures that local residents and tourists put on the local area and on the global environment. Based on that information, they discuss the topics of biological efficiency and fair trading between communities in order for them to be informed on policy-making regarding tourism.

           

            These aforesaid empirical research studies touched little on the topic of environmental performance assessment. Gössling et al. (2002) in their research on tourist ecological footprint in Seychelles points out that the ecological footprints pertaining to accommodation include those related to the use of construction land and from energy consumption. They calculate construction land use and energy consumption (per bed night in MJs (heat of combustion) identify) of various types of accommodations to provide important reference data for later research. Pattersona et al. (2008) point out that the ecological footprint of the accommodation sector also comes from water and waste disposal. These researches thus treat accommodation as an element of tourist activities. Further, catering is singled out and put aside, thus neglecting to examine the comprehensiveness of the overall hotel businesses operations in lodging, food and beverage and entertainment facilities.

            To sum up, the existing literature on the ecological footprint of hotels is unsystematic and incomplete and fails to treat hotels as a stand-alone subject of study, thus as an outcome, rendering only rough calculations and analyses. It is, therefore, necessary to undertake further research in greater detail to render precise conclusions on the EF of hotels that are more convincing and provide a more exact reference for future studies.

METHODOLOGY

            Based on the literature review above, we construct a calculation model by consumption categories as shown in Figure 1. The model has six parts: Food, energy, textile, paper, waste, and construction land. Various resource or energy consumption items are converted into biologically productive land areas. There are six basic types of biologically productive land: Cropland, grazing land, forestland, construction land, fossil energy resource land, and water (marine) area. Since biocapacity varies with land types, the biologically productive land area figures must be converted to reflect the same biocapacity before being totaled. In other words, the ratio between the consumption of a certain type of goods and the yield per unit of such goods on a certain type of land is the biologically productive land area required for that type of land. Multiply the figure by the corresponding equivalent factor, and we have the required area for this type of land under local or international standards.

The EF of Hotels (The framework of the ecological footprint of hotels).
Food	Energy	Textile	Paper products	Waste disposal	Construction land
Cropland/ forest land/ water area/ grazing land	Fossil energy resource land	Cropland	Forest land	Fossil energy resource land	Use Built-up land

See Formula :

EFi = Qi / Pi × Ei

Wherein:

EFi: represents the ecological footprint of a certain category, normally expressed in units of global             hectares (ghm2).

Qi: represents the total consumption of a certain type of goods, normally expressed in units of             kilograms (kg) or tons (t).

Pi: represents the world average yield of this type of goods, normally expressed in units of             kilograms/hectare (kg/hm2).

Ei: is the equivalent factor for the type of the land which produces .this type of goods. And, the             value of the coefficient varies with land type.

1.    Calculation of the ecological footprint of energy consumption

2.    Calculation of the ecological footprint of food consumption

3.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for waste disposal

4.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for paper products

5.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for textile products

6.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for construction land use

7.    Calculation of the ecological footprint for hotels

8.    Calculation of the average ecological footprint per bed per night.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

            This study assesses empirically the environmental performance of the hotel industry in Taiwan. A performance assessment model is built on the basis of the afore-described ecological footprint method. The environmental performance of the hotels is then reviewed by examining the overall assessment values.

1.    Subject of the assessment and the assessment approach

2.    Parameters of the calculation

3.    Specs of goods

4.    Conversion ratios for consumption

5.    Calculation and analysis of the ecological footprint

6.    Analyzing the aggregate ecological footprint of hotels

7.    Analyzing the demand for land typed

8.    Analyzing the ecological footprint for food consumption

9.    Analyzing the ecological footprint for energy consumption

10. Analyzing the ecological footprint for catering and accommodation sectors of hotels

11. A comparative analysis

12. The accommodations sector analysis

13. The ecological footprint of hotels analysis

            In the studies of Majorca and Cyprus, hotels waste disposal is the biggest contributor to the ecological footprint of these hotels. WWF (2002) statistics show that hotels in these two areas produce 4.3 and 9.87 kg of waste per bed per night. Peeters and Schouten (2006) are skeptical about that finding. In our study, waste includes sewage, food waste, textile scrap, and waste paper. The amount of food waste is obtained through a mathematics conversion based on a 5% disposal rate. The estimation of the total waste amount is “conservative” and significantly lower than those recorded for the hotels in Majorca and Cyprus. However, even if we base our calculation on an annual waste amount of 500 tons, the variation in the per bed per night ecological footprint is between just 0.0005 and 0.001, still too small to bring the results up to the level of the hotels in Cyprus. What it does, however, is change the overall composition of the ecological footprint of the hotel-- the order between consumption categories of their contribution to the total ecological footprint change from food, energy, textile and waste to food, energy, waste and textile.

RESULTS, DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

            Overall, the higher the star rating, the more resources a hotel consumes and the greater are its ecological footprint and environmental impacts. In the order of the size of their respective ecological footprints, the consumption categories that constitute the ecological footprint calculation model for hotels developed in this study are food, energy, construction land, textile, and waste. The contribution of food to the total ecological footprint decreases as the star ratings of hotels rises. The

contribution of energy consumption, in contrast, increases as the star ratings of hotels go up.

            This study tries to illustrate, through ecological footprint calculation and analysis, the consumptions involved in objects or activities and the impacts these have on the environment. The hope is to improve ecological awareness among hotel operators and users. Based on the findings of the study, we make the following recommendations:

1.    Taiwan is experiencing a weak economy currently. By implementing environmental performance management systems, the hotel industry can cope with this situation better through energy saving and expense reduction and achieve effective cost reductions.

2.    Hotels should endeavor to enhance employee recognition of the green management concept, develop employee-training guidebooks on green management, educate employees regularly and enhance employee recognition regarding the value of green hotels. Only by making these changes can hotels build real environmental competitiveness.

3.    Hotel managers, when taking certain measures to implement environmental performance management systems, may consider giving guests discounts appropriate to increase the willingness of guests to become involved and eliminate ongoing resistance against the implementation of environmental management systems.

4.    Part of any environmental management system may involve activities that require considerable funding, example, the building of a water- cooling and recycling system. Hotel managers may find it to be beyond their capacity at times. Therefore, we suggest that the government offer tax rebates or tax exemption schemes or other favorable conditions that encourages hotel management to increase their desire to implement environmental management systems appropriately and consistently throughout the entire hotel industry.

REFERENCES :

Han-Shen Chen and Tsuifang Hsieh ,2011.An environmental performance assessment of the hotel industry using an ecological footprint .Journal of Hospitality Management and Tourism ,Taiwan..Journal of Hospitality Management and Tourism ,Taiwan.