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The purpose of this paper is to study whether quality certified hotels develop some managerial key factors in a significantly better way and have better performance.

The empirical data were collected from a sample of 303 Spanish hotels. Hotels were grouped as certified and non‐certified hotels and the differences were analysed between these two groups in relation to the key factors and performance variables.

Certified hotels develop better the key factors and have better performance. This supports the findings related to this issue in other industries and expands the literature on quality management in the hotel industry.

Quality certifications in hotels may be an important strategic initiative because they may facilitate the development of key factors and may have an impact on firm performance.

The paper reinforces the fact that the quality certification is also important in the hotel industry, where the more scarce literature on this issue in this industry suggests that it is necessary to analyse the relationship of quality certification on firm performance.

This study aims to explore the relationships among green practices, environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) image, customers’ trust and their behavioral intentions in a certified hotel context and examine the moderating effect of customers’ involvement in the buying process.

A survey was used to collect data from Spanish hotel customers. A structural equation model was developed to assess the research hypotheses.

Consumers’ trust on environmentally certified hotels has a direct effect on their behavioral intentions. Environmental CSR image has a direct effect on consumers’ trust on environmentally certified hotels, but it does not exert significant influence on consumers’ behavioral intentions. Additionally, the results support a positive and significant influence of consumers’ perceptions of green practices on the environmental CSR image of hotels. Finally, there is not a moderating effect of consumers’ involvement on the effects of green practices on CSR environmental image and of this variable on behavioral intentions.

To cross validate the results of this study, it is recommended that the formation of behavioral intentions in various types of environmentally certified hotel settings be investigated in future research.

Hospitality managers should design strategies to raise the perception of the green-related features of environmentally certified companies.

No prior study investigates the relationship between green practices, customers’ trust, their degree of involvement in the buying process and their behavioral intentions in relation to companies’ environmental CSR image in the hotel sector.

Este estudio explora las relaciones entre las prácticas medioambientales, la imagen de RSC medioambiental, la confianza de los consumidores y sus intenciones comportamentales en un contexto hotelero certificado examinando el efecto moderador de la involucración de los consumidores en el proceso de compra.

En la recopilación de los datos se empleó una encuesta dirigida a clientes de establecimientos hoteles en España. Así mismo, se desarrolló un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales para evaluar las hipótesis de investigación.

La confianza de los consumidores en hoteles certificados medioambientalmente tiene un efecto directo en sus intenciones comportamentales. La imagen de RSC medioambiental tiene un efecto directo en la confianza de los consumidores en dichos hoteles, a pesar de que no ejerce una influencia significativa en sus intenciones comportamentales. Además, los resultados respaldan una influencia positiva y significativa de las percepciones de los consumidores sobre las prácticas medioambientales en la imagen de RSC medioambiental de los hoteles certificados. Finalmente, no existe un efecto moderador de la involucración de los consumidores en los efectos de las prácticas medioambientales en la imagen de RSC y de esta variable en las intenciones comportamentales.

Para validar los resultados de este estudio, se recomienda investigar la formación de intenciones comportamentales en diversos tipos de entornos hoteleros certificados medioambientalmente.

Los gerentes de establecimientos hoteleros deben diseñar estrategias para aumentar la percepción por parte de los consumidores de las características medioambientales de las empresas certificadas medioambientalmente.

Ningún estudio previo analiza la relación entre las prácticas medioambientales, la confianza de los consumidores, su grado de involucración en el proceso de compra y sus intenciones comportamentales en relación con la imagen de RSC medioambiental en el sector hotelero.

The purpose of this paper is to use an eco-friendly service concept framework to demonstrate the effect of credible eco-certification signaling.

The authors examine a cross-sectional data set consisting of 2,481 hotel sites across the US. The authors measure the performance of the operations component of eco-friendly service by operations-driven resource efficiency (ODF), and the performance of the marketing component by customer-driven resource efficiency (CDF). A series of multivariate regressions compare these two resource efficiency measures between credibly eco-certified hotel sites and others.

The results indicate that credible eco-certifications achieve the signaling effect. Eco-certified hotels outperform others in both ODF and CDF measures; and eco-certified hotels still achieve higher CDF after controlling for ODF.

The findings suggest that eco-friendly service design requires not only eco-friendly operations but also a built-in credible signaling mechanism. This mechanism engages the customers in eco-friendly service coproduction and in doing so integrates the operations and marketing components of eco-friendly service strategy through eco-certifications.

This study is among the first to demonstrate empirically the signaling effect of credible eco-certifications in services. It increases understanding of eco-friendly service design and delivery by exploring the role of credible eco-certifications in linking customer benefits with the service organization's strategic intent.

The successful continuation of green certification in the Sri Lankan hotel sector is vital for tourism industry as well as the economy of the country as it balances the economic interests with social and environmental responsibilities. However, it has become an issue in the Sri Lankan hospitality and tourism industry to sustain green certification due to many challenges. The prevailing situation highlights the need of exploring long-term strategies to mitigate challenges in sustaining green certification which has not been researched to date. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to propose strategies to mitigate challenges in sustaining green certification in the hotel sector in Sri Lanka.

In total, 3 hotels were selected as cases of the study and 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted with engineers, maintenance managers and supervisors, who are responsible for sustaining green certificates at such hotels. The collected data were subjected to cross-case analysis to determine challenges in sustaining green certification. The findings were analysed with the support of the QSR.NVivo version 11.0 computer software.

Challenges were identified in detail under five main categories. They are technical, managerial, political and legal, environment and biological and social and cultural. Such challenges include design and construction defects, use of poor quality building and other materials, improper maintenance practices, incomplete and unclear construction documents, plans and specifications, resource limitations, insufficient budget allocations, government intervention, legal constraints, lack of user awareness and natural environmental conditions. Finally, strategies to mitigate such challenges are proposed based on empirical research findings.

Only the Green Globe certified hotels in Sri Lanka were selected considering their need to renew certification annually. Further, interviewees were selected mainly focusing on the operational phase of a building. Hence, the findings were mostly limited to the perceptions and knowledge areas of selected interviewees. This can be highlighted as a primary limitation of the research, where a further study should be carried out on the perceptions of design stage professionals incorporating design stage challenges and strategies into the study.

The proposed strategies can be pursued by hoteliers to mitigate challenges in sustaining green certification, which will ultimately facilitate to balance economic interests with social and environmental responsibilities.

The aim of this study is to compare the diffusion of certifications under two quality management systems (QMSs) in the tourism sector in Spain: the generic ISO 9001 international standard; and the Spanish industry‐specific “Q” standard.

The study pursues this objective by comparing the logistic curves of dissemination of certifications under the two standards using data obtained from official sources. This analysis is complemented with qualitative data from several case studies of Spanish hotels and restaurants.

The results show that the two standards are at different stages of diffusion: certification under the Spanish “Q” standard is increasing, while the ISO 9001 international standard seems to have reached saturation point, despite the fact that a lower number of certifications have been registered under ISO 9001 than under the “Q” standard.

The main contribution of this study is that it is one of the first to analyse the dissemination of quality standards in a specific sector. The findings are thus of considerable importance in extending knowledge of quality management in the tourism sector.

In 2010, as a response to global mega trends, the Best Western International central office requested all of its offices worldwide to implement environmental programs. The Mexico, Central America, and Ecuador offices consulted with Universidad del Caribe about the best way to fulfill this request and as a result a collaborative project began. A few months later, a Best Environmental Practices Manual (according to the Best Western operational practices and international environmental standards) was developed, together with the Best Green (BG) award and the implementation and external evaluation process. The corporate office evaluated the award and selected it together with the eight recognized international ecolabels, including it as part of its operation. They also promoted and sold awarded hotels as green products. After more than three years of working with the program in the regopm, 49 hotels have obtained the award and 13 have revalidated this certification. Unfortunately, for many external reasons, the program was suspended in 2014. However, this experience offers many valuable lessons in the collaboration among sectors and helps close the gap between theory and praxis and to make more effective collaboration process to increase tourism competitiveness.

More hotels are beginning to embrace green practices given increasing awareness of sustainable development. The purpose of this study is to examine factors contributing to hotels’ participation in TripAdvisor’s GreenLeaders program.

Based on a sample of 48,064 hotels from 328 destinations in 29 countries, the authors leverage a multi-level logit model to examine antecedents of GreenLeaders participation. A multi-level ordered logit model is then estimated to uncover factors influencing the ranking of this participation.

Empirical results indicate that hotels with a larger size, a higher class, a better online reputation, greater reliance on business travelers, fewer neighboring hotels and a more long-term-oriented culture are more apt to join the program. Online reputation factors, hotel size and the number of neighboring hotels explain GreenLeaders hotels’ rankings. A series of robustness checks reinforces the results.

The results shed light on green program design and promotion. These findings can help hotel practitioners identify ideal target markets and better use their organizational resources to establish green programs. Several strategies can be implemented to promote hotels’ commitment to sustainability and to encourage guests’ awareness of and involvement in green practices.

This study enriches knowledge of sustainable hospitality and tourism. The findings of this study also address corporate social responsibility by analyzing factors that can promote and inhibit GreenLeaders program participation. Further, as a complement to hotel- and location-specific factors, the authors scrutinize the effects of cultural features in shaping green strategies.

This study aims to describe and understand how and to what extent hotel managers adopt sustainable development (SD) practices in their establishment, given the presence of barriers to the adoption of such practices by hotel establishments, and the lack of knowledge as to the ways and means by which an SD orientation is developed and implemented.

A qualitative research strategy was chosen to answer the research questions, that is, a multi-site case study of five Canadian hotels.

The study shows why and how hotel managers proceeded to develop and implement an SD orientation, as well as the contextual factors that affected the extent to which SD practices were adopted.

The initial elaboration and validation of a process model of SD adoption in hotel establishments constitute a conceptual building block upon which this complex phenomenon can be further studied.

This study demonstrates that in the hospitality industry, implementing an SD orientation is a strategy that can be enabled through the provision of required knowledge and expertise as well as appropriate tools and techniques to hotel managers.

In describing and understanding the dynamics of implementing a SD orientation in five Canadian hotels, this study has provided a conceptually and practically fruitful answer to the question of “how” and “to what extent” hotels adopt SD practices.

This study aims to analyzes the effects of the consumer-generated media (CGM) boom on hotel managers’ investment behavior concerning quality signals.

Survival analysis has been conducted, considering the permanence/dropout of the Spanish hotels in a quality certification system during the 1998–2020 period.

The number of hotels certified since 2010 has been progressively falling, pointing to a decreasing interest of the managers in these certifications. Nevertheless, this is not a generalized phenomenon: the hotel characteristics and the number and nature of reviews about them in CGM significantly affect their permanence decisions in certification systems.

The findings provide several keys to optimizing investment management in quality signals considering hotel characteristics and their positioning in CGM.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses the relationship between the presence of hotels in CGM and their investments in alternative quality signals. The results will allow future investment decisions based on previous real business experiences.

This paper aims to assess how a hotel geographical location in different parts of Central and Eastern Europe influences the complexity of perception of pro-environmental behavior.

To find out, whether hotel location in a specific country influences the complexity of environmental practices, this study used two closely connected multivariate statistical techniques analyzing gradients: principal components analysis and partial redundancy analysis. The research comprises data collection from seven countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In all, 25 randomly selected hotels (based on star rating) from various countries were approached to complete a questionnaire. Environmental practices were studied based on motivations, perception of barriers, perception of support from different levels of public sector, will of managers to promote pro-environmental measures based on sufficient funding, perception of legislation and perception of various other important factors.

The study reveals significant differences between hotels in Central Europe and Eastern Europe in the perception of the complexity in implementation of the environmental practices by hotel managers. The character of the present study, however, needs to address the identification of particular aspects that are relevant to the geographical differences among the studied countries.

Research was limited to a selection of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. There is still probability that managers in hotels from Poland and Croatia could possess different preferences. Other limitation of this study is that only special part of hotels were asked – hotels certified by star grading, out of our scope remained other hotels. It is also known that important factor is precise location of hotel within country – hotels in established tourism destination behave other way that those outside recreational areas. These factors deserve further study within this topic. There are many aspects of sustainability and environmental protection regarding hotel industry. As we have found in our principal correspondence analysis, different environmental measures were different location in biplot – some were affected by country, the other by star grading and affiliation to hotel chain. The complexity deserves to be studied in depth.

The importance lies first in the identification of the aspects that are governed by geographical differences among the countries studied. These aspects are the initiatives and support from the government and the local governments, which counteract the perception that there is a lack of financial resources and the return on investments is slow. So, based on the data, which included information from various types of hotels from seven CEE countries, the activities of national and local authorities were identified to be the main differentiating variable. The support of the environment-friendly conduct of business in the hotel industry is appreciated by hotel managers from Central Europe. On the other hand, hotel managers from Eastern Europe do not feel any significant support from either national or other public institutions. The second factor of differentiation is represented by the perception of the lack of funds. Hotel managers from Eastern Europe feel strongly about funds limitation. The coherence of both those factors is obvious in the results, as they show the same direction but opposite orientation. It has already been discussed above. When looking at the results, the authors find the perception of availability of funds to be a fundamental difference between hotel management in Central Europe and in Eastern Europe. The lack of funds is perceived more intensively in Eastern Europe than in Central Europe, particularly because of a stronger awareness of direct or indirect support for such activities by national and other public institutions in Central Europe.

The differentiation of the aspects mentioned above comes from the social and culture policies, company policies and business cultures between these two sub-realms. Pro-environmental actions are apparently promoted less publicly in Eastern European countries than in Central European countries. The reaction to the trend for demand of greener hotels is stronger in the West, and its hotels are more likely to have legislation requirements and public support as an incentive to adopt pro-environmental measures in their business operations.

The study is based on data obtained from seven countries. The results revealed a problem of the macro-environmental influence on hotels’ potential to implement environmentally sustainable approaches and procedures throughout the industry.