Attaining Sustainability In Hospitality And Tourism: Importance And Recommendations

Importance of Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism

You are required to choose an issue that you found interesting from the in class presentations.  You can do your own or one from your classmates.  Your task is to propose at least three recommendations that focus on solving your chosen issue from a managerial point of view.

The chosen issue is attainment of sustainability in hospitality and tourism. Most of the people believe that there is no sustainable or eco-friendly travel due to the use of vast amount of carbon, fuel and other resources (Mowforth and Munt 2015). However, this does not stop people from travelling and hence the numbers continues to grow. Lessening the environmental impact of millions of people throughout Australia and the world may lead to a better economy. The hospitality industry in Australia should adopt the policy of green hotel on a mass scale so that it becomes beneficial to the futuristic development of tourism and the well-being of the planet (Baker, Davis and Weaver 2014).

Sustainable tourism refers to the kind of tourism that ensures respecting both the local people along with the cultural heritage, environment and the traveler (Jamal and Camargo 2014.). The importance of sustainability in hospitality and tourism is vital for continuing the work towards the positive balancing of the experiential, environmental, economic and socio-cultural impacts. The experiential impact describes the influence of visitors on each other whereas the socio cultural impact refers to the impact of the visitors on the local residents (Marion 2016). The impact of hospitality and tourism must not be so overpowering that makes the local feel alienated to their own country. Thus, the attainment of sustainability in hospitality and tourism includes ensuring that tourism does not influence the local communities and the natural environment. Moreover, sustainability is attained through consultation with the local communities on the planned developments and making sure that infrastructure improvement helps on benefiting the local people in addition to the tourist. 

Sustainability in tourism attained through fulfillment of the concept of ecotourism (Fennell 2014). Ecotourism refers to a tourism based on nature that involves interpretation and education of natural environment and is ecologically sustainable. Ecotourism helps in recognizing the natural environment that includes cultural components and attainment of the sustainability factor involves appropriate return on local community and conservation of resources on a long-term basis (Turcu 2013).

The natural environment of Australia serves as the key attraction for the international visitors (Goudie 2013). Thus, maintenance of the reputation and brand of Australia in such markets is essential for the success and future growth of the hospital and tourism industry where stress on ecotourism helps in providing memorable, authentic and safe experience of the visitors. Protection of the cultural and environmental assets of Australia is essential for underpinning the quality and diversity of the visitor experience. Ecotourism helps in focusing on the growing and larger sector of the broad tourism experience. The focus on ecotourism not only helps in attaining sustainability but also helps in the future development and growth of the hospitality and tourism industry through the following measures:

Attaining Sustainability through Ecotourism

Protection of the Parks:

1. Ecotourism helps in increased and consistent resourcing of the cultural and natural heritage management (Strickland-Munro and Moore 2013). The initiative also gives a boost to the government for investing sustainably and wisely.
2. The ecotourism boost up commercial development within protected areas that is also in compliance with the best practice guidelines of eco-opportunities in the natural and protected areas

Involvement of the Operators:

1. Ecotourism also helps in consultation and engagement with the tour operators for preparation of their applications
2. Helps in independent preparation of tourism impact assessments for major development applications
3. Helps in acknowledging the character of cultural destination and landscape in developing decisions
4. Allowed national park agencies for creating tourism reference groups for licensed tour operators and industry associations for providing estate wide inputs for issue management and park planning

Investment in Future:

1. Ecotourism enabled strengthening the tourism agencies for destination and product development programs as well as functions.
2. Enabled further development of ecotourism plans and boosted research in tourism.

Incentivizing the Quality:

Ecotourism helps in reducing the risk and improving the experience of the visitor through incentivizing quality operations (Liu et al. 2014).

The three recommendations for attaining sustainability in tourism are as follows:

Recommendation 1

For attaining sustainability in hospitality and tourism, recommendations provided for identifying the stakeholders and considering how and when people should be involved or consulted for attaining sustainability. The stakeholders in this case might involve visitors, operators and businesses, tourism organizations, park and environment management agencies, cultural heritage agencies, regional, local and other governments, communities and indigenous people.  It is also important to ascertain who is responsible for environment, tourism and heritage issues related to place or region. It is very important for strategically and systemically identifying and involving those with the stake in place, tourism product and region that will ensure in involving the right kind of people in the future and planning activities. This will also ensure determining the heritage significance of the place and in consideration of all the important issues. This will also help in determining whether the future actions related to ecotourism are realistic and helps in meeting the needs of everyone. Through this step, one can also enable building support for regional plans, development proposals and management plans supporting the ecotourism aspect.

Thus, identifying everyone who needed to be involved in the future decisions for attaining the sustainability factor in tourism is necessary. This will helps in forming various types of consultation that can finally leads to some form of involvement.

Recommendation 2

To attain sustainable aspect of hospitality and tourism recommendations for identification of the existing sources or studies of information is necessary. It is also important for summarizing and locating the available information on the potential and current market for tourism. In addition, there is also the necessity for determining the heritage assets, themes and their values. It is also important to gather information that will act as a powerful tool for drawing relevant facts for providing solid ground for futuristic decisions related to sustainability. For information on managing and planning tourism at heritage places, it is sometimes necessary to have a look at the newspaper articles, sound recordings, council records, tour operator records, annual reports, research reports and park management plans. Information on aspects related to sustainability attained by talking to individuals who are knowledgeable through various interview, questionnaires, observations and focus group. The collected information must also be authentic to certain extent. Reliance on heritage management authorities, state and Australian Government departments and existing tour operators is also necessary.

Recommendation 3

In order to attain sustainability in hospitality and tourism it is recommended to identify the special feature of the region, product or place. There are also recommendations provided on establishing how well the special features helps in the attainment of the sustainability aspect. It is also necessary for establishing whether there exists further potential for using the special values of tourism and how their interpretation might lead to the aspect of sustainability. Moreover, it is also necessary for identifying the important values of the place, product or region and thereby adopting an ideal means for their communication and thereby making the aspect of attainment of sustainability in hospitability and tourism easier. While considering sustainability in tourism it is important to note that a particular place might hold a special importance not only to the local community but also to the whole world. At the same time it is also important for identification of cultural and natural heritage values that contributes to the sustainability aspect and considered the key assets of tourism.ity. On the other hand, the uniqueness of a place and its values comprises of a larger part of the hospitality and tourism business and acts as the vital selling points in addition to helping in the attaining sustainability.

References:

Baker, M.A., Davis, E.A. and Weaver, P.A., 2014. Eco-friendly attitudes, barriers to participation, and differences in behavior at green hotels. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(1), pp.89-99.

Fennell, D.A., 2014. Ecotourism. Routledge.

Goudie, A.S., 2013. The human impact on the natural environment: past, present, and future. John Wiley & Sons.

Jamal, T. and Camargo, B.A., 2014. Sustainable tourism, justice and an ethic of care: Toward the just destination. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22(1), pp.11-30.

Liu, J., Qu, H., Huang, D., Chen, G., Yue, X., Zhao, X. and Liang, Z., 2014. The role of social capital in encouraging residents’ pro-environmental behaviors in community-based ecotourism. Tourism Management, 41, pp.190-201.

Marion, J.L., 2016. A review and synthesis of recreation ecology research supporting carrying capacity and visitor use management decisionmaking. Journal of Forestry, 114(3), pp.339-351.

Mowforth, M. and Munt, I., 2015. Tourism and sustainability: Development, globalisation and new tourism in the third world. Routledge.

Strickland-Munro, J. and Moore, S., 2013. Indigenous involvement and benefits from tourism in protected areas: a study of Purnululu National Park and Warmun Community, Australia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(1), pp.26-41.

Turcu, C., 2013. Re-thinking sustainability indicators: local perspectives of urban sustainability. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 56(5), pp.695-7