Sustainability practices of hotels in Ghana and the influence of customer interest and participation

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to examine how customer interest and participation in environmental sustainability activities influence the uptake of sustainability initiatives by hotels in Ghana. The study was a descriptive survey research and employed the quantitative approach to research for the purposes of data collection and analysis. The sample was made up of 219 respondents comprising one key hotel staff responsible for sustainability issues, and two hotel guests selected from the 73 sampled hotels. Questionnaire was employed as the main instrument of data collection and data were analysed using means and standard deviation which was facilitated by SPSS (version 26). The findings show that the environmental sustainability initiatives undertaken by hotels in Accra focus mainly on water conservation, energy conservation, waste management and control, and cost reduction. Also, the results show that guests who engaged in sustainability activities at home tend to show more interest in the sustainability programmes of hotels when they lodge in a hotel. Besides, the guests had their own expectations and views about the nature of sustainability initiatives that hotels should engage in. Among the expectations were that, hotels must be concerned about how their operations affect the environment, majority of the respondents agreed that hotels should engage in recycling and reuse of products were necessary, hotels should help with conserving water, energy, and natural resources, Moreover, it was found that management of hotels are influenced to pursue sustainability programmes when they receive positive responses from hotel guests with regard their level of compliance with sustainability policies and regulations of the hotels, customers willingness to pay a price premium for green hotels, and growing customer demand for sustainability practices by hotels. It was deduced from the findings that while some hotels voluntarily undertake sustainability initiatives as a way of contributing to the global sustainability agenda, the uptake of sustainability initiatives by majority of hotels in Accra is mostly influenced by customer interest and level of participation in sustainability activities. It is recommended that customer interests and expectations of the nature of sustainability practices hotels, should be taken into consideration by hotels when designing their sustainability programmes.