Dealing with Greenwashing in Hotels Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Dealing with Greenwashing in Hotels - Essay ExampleWith the current gradual shift of the market towards eco-sustainability, companies be finding it hard to hold out in the conventional way, with customers putting more pressure to such hotels to comply with environsal sustainability requirements. The eco-tourism sector has some certifications based on eco sustainability with hotels being awarded ratings and certifications depending on the level in which they comply with environmental standards. Consequently, there are a large number of hotels, pretending to offer eco-friendly work on the surface, with no tangible or practical results in the market today, as customers portray more preference to environmental sustainable services. This is cognize as greenwashing. This paper discusses the use of strict control and monitoring, and tough penalties as effective ways to monish greenwashing in hotels. G altogethericano (2011) describes Greenwashing as the act of deliberately misleading consumers on the environmental practices adhered to by an establishment opineing their services and products. This term evolved from the public awareness where the public discovered there were major inconsistencies between companies actual fashion and claims regarding eco- -friendly practices, in order to hoodwink and attract more customers using high accreditation from environmental bodies such as LEED. Many companies have used such green-labels as marketing tools with nothing tangible to show with regard to environmental sustainability. Several hotels have developed signs that explain to guests that reusing towels will make savings that would be channeled to benignity or environmental organizations (Gallicano, 2011). While such a move is a worthy cause and is back up by legion(predicate) guests, some companies do not end up meeting their bargain as customers are not privy to the internal working policies of such a hotel. Moreover, there are currently vague standards in the h otel industry that create loopholes for greenwashing to take place. A research by Dara ORourke an environment professor at the University of California noted that 33% of all food products released to the market in 2008 claiming to be natural made false claims. These foods made their way to hotels still claiming to be natural with guests being duped on the real nature of the foods (Erica & Aaron, 2010). 98% of the above foods were found to have a false claim, while 22% of the food products had green claims that could not be established, implying such claims were made to dupe the customers who may not be aware regarding green standards, with hotels serving such food to customers with the belief they are eco-friendly. To avoid greenwashing hotels have the responsibleness of making a follow up of all their suppliers to ensure they adhere to green standards. The issue of greenwashing has sensibilize customers to a large scale with more and more customers being vigil to the services off ered in many tourism hotels across the globe, and particularly those claiming to have attained high levels of green certification. In July 2007, one of the passing influential blogs, TripplePundit.com that has received a large number of similar claims, had elaborate discussions indicating that Going Green has set about serious deception in the hotel industry (Jessica, 2008). The blog analyzed some of the leading hotels that included Marriot Hotels, Fairmont Hotels and Starwoods, all of which claimed to have been granted a LEED certification. From this blog, customers indicated thatch the best extent in which the companies could be claimed to have gone(a) green is through the contribution of 1% of their revenue to local environmental groups. According to customers, most of the