Using Ecological Footprint Accounting model as a tool for sustainable development in the hospitality industry: Evidence from Egypt

Abstract

In recent years, the trend toward the sustainability reports are increasing especially within the era of the integrating reporting. In the same time the efforts of the government for improving the hospitality sector represented in the tourism industry in Egypt is one of the main objectives of 2030 plan. The impacts of the hospitality industry on the environment have become widely acknowledged. As tourism is predicted to continue growing in the next decade, there is an urgent need for the hospitality sector to embrace sustainability principles in order that tourists may continue travelling, while placing minimal impacts on the natural environment. Although there is much debate over the concepts of sustainability and how it is to be measured, the Ecological Footprint has recently been proposed as a key indicator of sustainable hospitality activities, due to its abilities to quantify the amount of resources needed for hospitality activities, and enable comparisons between hospitality components through its global, standardized measurements. The Ecological Footprint is a tool that measures humanity's demands upon the natural biosphere and its effect on the national resources of the countries. It tracks the biologically productive land and water required to produce all the resources a population consumes and to segregate its wastes. Information was collected on respondents from hotels managers and they requested to provide information on accommodation aspects such as occupancy rates, property sizes, average water and energy usage, waste management routines and information to determine the average ecological footprints of tourists in the selected hotels. In order to understand the relationship between the ecological footprint and tourist behaviors. The analysis of this information provide an indication of the current green status of hospitality and for better environmental practices.