Technology-Based Solutions to Effective Sustainability Benchmarking in the Hotel Industry

The present case examines the opportunities, as well as the difficulties, that hoteliers face in making their hotels more sustainable. Although the traditional Excel-based methodologies mentioned above provide accurate information and allow for the objective measurement of sustainability performance, and consequently also for benchmarking, expertise is required to interpret the data and substantial effort to organise and illustrate it visually. The question is posed: How effective are these methodologies for hoteliers in terms of motivating their employees regarding being more sustainable given the results may not be easily understood and the data may not be presented in a visually appealing manner? It is mooted that a technology-based solution, in the form of a mobile application, could be the answer to tackling this problem and proposed that a functional technological tool could allow for more effective evaluation and interpretation of the environmental impact that hotels have at present and how they compare to the industry leaders.