Is the hotel industry prepared to face the challenge of sustainable development?

This article focuses on one of the hotel industry's key challenges: sustainable development. By reviewing the current impact and characteristics of this industry, its high potential to contribute to this challenge is established. The key question addressed here - especially interesting from a futures perspective - is whether the hotel industry is prepared to fulfil that potential. Through a review of relevant literature and 12 in-depth interviews with hoteliers in leading positions in Dutch hotels, this article evaluates to what extent the hotel industry's current business models and its managers' willingness and capabilities are 'future proof' from a sustainable development perspective. It concludes that the hotel industry is not yet able to make an optimal contribution and needs assistance to do so in the future, especially with respect to addressing guests' needs and wants and (subsequent) institutionalization of sustainability, but the potential is there and maybe even more so than before.