Use of soft measures for achieving decarbonization in hotels
The global hospitality industry is growing steadily nowadays reflecting the increase in the global income and the willingness of many people to travel to several destinations. However, it accounts for around 6% in the global greenhouse gas emissions. Taking into account the global policies for climate change mitigation hotels and other tourism enterprises should reduce their carbon emissions replacing the use of fossil fuels with zero-carbon energy sources and technologies. Several studies have already indicated that the energy technologies required for the elimination of carbon emissions in hotels are mature, reliable and cost-efficient. However, hotels willing to eliminate their carbon footprint, apart from using green energy technologies in their properties, should use various low cost soft measures complementing their green energy investments. These soft measures, which do not involve energy investments, include energy monitoring, energy auditing, energy benchmarking, behavioral changes of the guests and the staff as well as offsetting of carbon emissions. These soft measures facilitate the elimination of the carbon footprint in hotels reducing the cost of the required clean energy investments. The results of this study could be useful to hotels’ owners, to energy service providers and to various stakeholders of the hotel industry.
Keywords: audit, behavioral change, benchmarking, decarbonization, hotels, monitoring, offset
