The Adoption of Environmental Practices in Small Hotels. Voluntary or Mandatory? An Empirical Approach

This paper examines small hotels that have some type of environmental certification. A survey of 210 small (less than 50 employees) Catalonian hotels was conducted to investigate whether there are significant differences in the results of the implementation practices between hotels that adopt these certifications due to environmental pressure (from the government, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders) and hotels that voluntarily commit to green policies. Significant differences were identified in the results on the hotels when structural equation modelling (SEM) was undertaken. This investigation suggests that hotels that voluntarily commit to green policies obtain better results than other hotels. The conclusion is that governments must not only regulate, but also promote awareness actions in small and medium-sized (SME) tourism companies to improve the environment. SME tourism companies must understand that both the environment and they themselves will benefit.