Environmental Training and Measures at Scandic Hotels, Sweden

Abstract

Mass tourism destinations and facilities, accounting for the most significant share of the global tourism market, are still largely managed with little or no environmental concern. The willingness and ability of facility management and staff to adopt greater environmental awareness and responsibility is crucial in striving towards a higher degree of sustainability in the tourism sector. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the environmental proactiveness and ground-breaking work that has been carried out within the Scandic hotel chain over the past decade. This is an account of how environmental responsibility can become a top corporate priority and lead to significantly decreased environmental impacts, excellent economic performance, and a considerably upgraded environmental image.

Environmental awareness and initiatives in the Swedish and Polish hotel industries—survey results

“…They are also aware that the hotel industry would benefit from environmental pro-activeness among operators. In response to emerging customer demand for ''green'' operations, combined with the growing evidence of financial benefits from managing resource-efficient facilities (UNEP and IH&RA, 1997;Martinac, et al, 2001;SSCC, 2003;Bohdanowicz, et al, 2005), hoteliers are more willing to make changes to accommodate pro-ecological programmes.…”

“…Increasingly stringent environment-related regulations are now being adopted and enforced in many parts of the world, including the EU. Hotel and tourism organisations and even hotel companies are developing environmental guidelines, training programmes and publishing best practice case studies (IHEI, 1993;IH&RA et al, 1995;UNEP and IH&RA, 1997;Accor Group, 1998;SHR, 1999;Genot et al, 2001;Bergkvist, 2004;Bohdanowicz et al, 2005). Pro-ecological initiatives are becoming increasingly popular among hoteliers worldwide.…”

Advancing the Sustainable Tourism Agenda Through Strategic CSR Perspectives

“…Weeden (2002) suggested that this can be achieved by ensuring that practices are transparent and can be viewed by all stakeholders, shareholders, employees and communities (Wheeler, 1990(Wheeler, , 1991. Significant research has emerged about CSR behaviour and ethics among tourism and hospitality enterprises (see Ayuso, 2006Ayuso, , 2007Bohdanowicz, Simanic, & Martinac, 2005;Dodds & Kuehnel, 2010;Kasim, 2006;Merwe & Wöcke, 2007, among others). Inevitably, there were questions which are still relatively unanswered; whether the tourism sector differs from other industries over CSR and its implementation.…”

Does Triple Bottom Line reporting improve hotel performance?

“…If we consider each of the TBL pillars (financial, social, and environmental reporting) separately, there are many claims in the literature that financial, social and environmental reporting can give hotels a sustainable competitive advantage (Kirk, 1995;Bohdanowicz, 2005;Bramwell and Alletorp, 2001;Bohdanowicz et al, 2005;Chan and Wong, 2006;Erdogan and Baris, 2007). Financial reporting, for instance, may lead to improved performance by allowing hotels to attract capitals through being more transparent with investors, and through lowering over-investment, lower under-investment, or both (Biddel et al, 2009).…”