How green are hotels in Accra? Environmental management practices and initiatives in tourist accommodation

Abstract

There have been growing concerns about the impacts of hotels on the environment globally and in Accra where there is uncontrolled development of hotel facilities. This has led to calls for hotels to reduce their carbon footprints by embarking on environmental management practices since sustainable hotels lead to sustainable destinations. A number of hotels, mostly in the developed world have responded to such concerns by embarking on a number of environmental initiatives. However, it is larger hotels which are mostly multinationals or have international affiliations which have been at the forefront of environmental initiatives (Wahab and Pigram, 1997; Mauforth and Munt, 1998; Mensah, 2006). This study therefore determines how hotels in a developing sub-saran African city like Accra are responding to the calls for sustainable practices by looking at their environmental management initiatives and environmental management performance. The managers of 200 hotels which were selected through the stratified random sampling method were surveyed using a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire elicited information on the environmental management performance of the hotels in ten key areas. The results of the study indicated that though the hotels performed creditably in the area of environmental health, their performance in the area of voluntary environmental management activities such as eco-labelling and certification was not encouraging. Also, only 34% of the hotels had voluntarily instituted initiatives in improved environmental performance. The results have implications for environmental policy formulation, voluntary environmental initiatives and the realization of the millennium development goals