Question 1
Competitive Advantage
The General Manager of the Hotel Van Orange, Noordwijk, The Netherlands explains that the hotel is located in one the most environmentally conscious communities in the Netherlands. The hotel boasts of modern large meeting space and a wellness center. The hotel’s reason to pursue the Green Globe certification was informed by the realization that the certification goes beyond sustainability certification; it involves people, and the hotel values people. The most important strategy relating to people the hotel wishes to maintain is cultivating mutual relationships with the employees and the clients. The hotel has a social responsibility strategy that involves giving back to the community and protecting the environment. The hotel has invested in sustainability through a renovations scheme that captures aspects of both sustainability and luxury. The expensive investment in sustainability is envisioned to pay off in the long term. The hotel makes use of sustainable designing and building, for example, the beach club is built with materials requiring little maintenance. The hotel has committed to energy and gas saving through the use of LED lighting technology, which provides versatility with colors and light shades. The hotel has invested in new insulation aimed at saving 15% to 17% of gas usage. The hotel has attained some degree of competitive advantage through the Green Globe certification since major clients are drawn by the business’s environmental consciousness. The hotel ensures that up to 73% of suppliers are local and uphold green objectives. The hotel ensures that the suppliers comply with sustainability requirements and have social responsibility mandates within their operations. Sustainability and social responsibility has become a way of living and the hotel aims at achieving that by giving back and preserving as much as possible without compromising on luxury and enjoyment.
Connect with Guest Expectations
Anita Bos, the General Manager of Intercontinental Amstel Amsterdam explains the process of attaining the Green Globe certification. She underscores the importance of involving all stakeholders in the pursuit of certification. The guests have contributed enormously in the process of achieving the certification through contributing active and focused ideas integrating hotel and home approaches about achieving environmental sustainability. This has included operating a fresh herb garden and keeping bees on hotel premises. The manager provides that when quests are served with the honey produced on the hotel site, and the story about it is told to them, this initiates a special connection with guests and makes them feel special and highly valued. The hotel ensures sourcing suppliers locally to provide local tastes and ensure compliance with environmental sensitivity. Guests are happier when they know where and how the products served to them have been sourced. The manager believes that their approach to innovation that includes blending ideas with history will be instrumental in achieving sustainability.
Question 2
Ways that the hotel industry can benefit from Green Globe Certification
The two hotels selected, that is Hotel Van Oranje and Intercontinental Amstel can benefit from Green Globe Certification through the following ways.
Gaining competitive edge
Connecting with guest expectations
Achieving a mark of excellence
Achievement of the certification marks the road map to sustainability
Achieving measurable Energy and Water Savings
Attaining international recognition of Green Practices
Three different ways that Hotel Van Oranje and Intercontinental Amstel have benefited from Green Globe Certification are described below.
Competitive Advantage
The Green Globe Certification provides distinguishing marks for the hotels and as a result opens up opportunities in the market. This is achieved by promoting and advertising the hotels to different types of travellers. Given the high competitive nature of the hotel industry, management should be innovative and attempt to attract new and different segments of the travelling and leisure seeking populations. The Green Globe Certification is a mark of a green hotel, and as such offers exclusive opportunity in attracting the environmentally sensitive guests. Marketing campaigns should be tailored to this specific segment. The Hotel Van Oranje has incorporated this consideration in the way it targets its customers by integrating the sustainability aspects with the strategy of supplier selection. The Intercontinental Amstel improves on its competitive advantages through offering guests opportunities to participate in the sustainability process. Both hotels have succeeded in attracting a particular segment of customers who are sensitive to environmental and sustainability concerns.
Increased Profitability
While the initial costs associated with the process of achieving Green Globe Certification may be high, the long term is characterized by increased cost saving, which ultimately leads to profitability. For instance, one key focus of the certification is the process of energy management. Managers have to change all lighting appliances, and the initial costs are usually high, but once the changes are made, the energy requirements are reduced and the associated savings contribute to profit. The installation of an insulation system for the Hotel Van Oranje was initially costly, but the manager explains how it has contributed to success. Another avenue for hotels that have attained the Green Globe Certification, is for them to demand a price premium. This is because the mechanics of the green product marketplace typically commands price premiums, and the demands for green products keep rising. Guests to the hotels are likely to be usually happy to pay higher for organic products since they associate them with health aspects and as being benefitial to the environment.
Enhanced Brand Image and Clarity
The benefits of attaining Green Globe certification involves being referred to as a green hotel, which means that the hotel must give back to the community. It is also a requirement that the hotel provides some form of education to employees and guests about environmental protection. The interactions fostered through operationalizing corporate social responsibility mean that guests and the society at large stop viewing the hotel as a corporation, but as a good and sensitive neighbor, mindful about the wellbeing of the employees, guests, and the community.
The proliferation of eco-labels in the hospitality and tourism marketplace has yielded confusions, and consumers are increasingly becoming aware of possibilities of “greenwashing,” a term that seeks to imply the acts of being lied to on the basis of being presented with untrue eco-labels. By achieving a reputable certification such as the Green Globe Certification, the hotels have the opportunity to function, unreservedly, as green hotels. This includes providing data on what is on offer, and what to expect when you make a package request. The certification provides a genuine eco-label that provides education to the guests, who are likely to take the green message to others, thus initiating a chain of events beneficial to both the hotel and the quests.
Question 3
Characteristics of a good sustainable tourism certification program include the following.
A certification logo
Regulatory Compliance
Published commitment to sustainable development (Certification, 16)
A generic management system (process) or specific criteria (performance) (Certification, 16)
Scouring, Auditing, or Reporting (Certification, 21)
Technical help and support (Certification, 22)
Fee structure to underpin the operation of the system (Certification, 22)
Description of the characteristics
Certification Logo
It is a common practice for certification programs to include a logo provided to members. The logo serves to differentiate products in a competitive marketplace. The Green Globe 21 Certification program enables businesses to display a logo at the beginning of their membership, or from a given date when a given environmental policy document is published. Such a logo serves as a commitment to implementing the certification standard (Certification, 14). Green Globe 21 then allows for a period of twelve months for the business to implement the necessary actions in complying with full membership requirements. The completion of the action implementation process may call for third party verification before the award of a different logo signifying compliance with membership conditions. Other programs have different certification processes, for example, the ECOTEL certification offers five different stages of award referred to as globes, with each globe having different criteria (Mycoo 490). Each globe has tiered criteria that shows progress regarding achievements in given areas, for example, solid waste management.
Regulatory Compliance
Most certification programs have requirements for members to comply with certain regulations. This ensures that public confidence in certification is founded on regulatory compliance. Usually, non-compliance is met with penalties and withdrawal of logos projecting good environmental credentials. It is envisaged that good compliance regulations help in achieving a level playing field especially for players in regions or locations where the tourism industry is rapidly growing. In cases where there are no baseline regulations upon which to base the regulatory framework, efforts of benchmarking from established regions can serve as guides. Some certification programs, however, insist on members surpassing regulatory requirements to qualify for certification. To illustrate this characteristic, Green Globe 21 provides membership to tour operators at an international level. One of the conditions for membership for the operators is compliance with all the regulations in their jurisdictions and beyond. This has contributed to some lack of clarity since the certification program does not spell out whether an international tour operator has to achieve the same level of regulatory compliance in all destinations, which would be a considerable operational challenge.
Published Commitment to Sustainable Development
Credible certification calls for the display of commitment to sustainability and environmental protection. One way of achieving this requirement is to publish such a commitment. When operators have made a published commitment to comply with certain operational requirements, it is easy to derive a monitoring and evaluation framework upon which to check progress and provide feedback. It is also an avenue for welcoming or allowing criticism from stakeholders. Successive managements have access to a commitment benchmark, which also can serve as a yardstick for evaluating management performance towards achieving and keeping the desired certification. For businesses operating within environments without developed and tested regulatory frameworks, the published commitment with a globally recognized certification body can serve as evidence that the enterprise has factored in sustainability and environmental protection concerns, especially when lobbying for recognition or certification at a lower level. This is also applicable to businesses opening branches in different locations, where they can justify their mandate using the parent branch’s certification status.
Generic Management System
The global response to environmental and sustainability concerns has resulted to different players working towards targeted programs, and this has led to well-defined and enduring elements in all sectors. Many of the players contribute towards an evolution of a generic system by sharing or making their criteria available or open to the public. The respective certification bodies have dealt with concerns regarding the level of details included in the generic management system. Each body provides guidelines about the management system of choice and prospective members have to either comply with them before certification, or engage in a gradual process of attaining compliance. Since some management systems are still evolving, the attempt has been to continually update the generic rubric and communicate the same to members and potential members. It is not specified if such systems must receive the ratification of the operational jurisdictions, but it is imperative that they function to illustrate the efforts of an impartial system to achieve sustainable development and environmental protection.
Scoring, Auditing or Reporting
A major concern for most certification programs relates to how the assessment of compliance is undertaken. Some certification program have a pre-screening process for members applying for certification. Others mandate the use of auditing systems which are either implemented through the certification body’s secretariat or provided by independent companies in assessing compliance. It is considered that the third party verification process recommended by many bodies, provides for the grounds of fairness and impartiality (Jarvis et al. 45).
Even though it is not a requirement, many bodies allow for appeals, usually at the cost of the applying business, in the event when the member applicants feel that they have been unfairly denied the certification achievement. The common response is for the certifying body to allow for some time for the applying members to implement recommendations deemed critical before re-applying for certification. Though this is not an official legal redress for certification issues, the general certification environment is supposed to portray a just system that is based on merit and inherent consciousness to achieve sustainable development and environmental protection.
Works Cited
Certification, Tourism. "An Analysis of Green Globe 21 and Other Certification Programs." Godalming: WWF UK (2000).
Jarvis, Nigel, Clare Weeden, and Natasha Simcock. "The benefits and challenges of sustainable tourism certification: A case study of the Green Tourism Business Scheme in the West of England." Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 17.01 (2010): 83-93.
Mycoo, Michelle. "Sustainable tourism using regulations, market mechanisms and green certification: a case study of Barbados." Journal of Sustainable Tourism 14.5 (2006): 489-511.
