Effective Approaches for Addressing Climate Change in the Hospitality Industry: Managers’ Viewpoints

Abstract

Since the Industrial Revolution, the pattern of climate has changed due to humankind’s industrial activity and producing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (Martinez, 2005). Because of the climate change issue, many environmental disasters such as floods, acidic rains, and air pollution appeared in each part of the world, and they created social and economic issues as well (Mulvihill, 2021). In 2015, countries in the form of an agreement (i.e. Paris Agreement) agreed to adopt certain strategies to keep the limit of global temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius (UN, 2024). Accordingly, to achieve this goal and prevent the enormous negative effects of climate change, community awareness becomes one of the key solutions for climate change mitigations and adaptations (Khatibi et al., 2021). The climate change issue is not only affecting temperature and land vegetation all around the globe, but it also has an inevitable effect on small islands, which are continuously witnessing a rise in sea level as a result of this issue (Macinnis-Ng et al., 2021). In addition, islands are highly dependent economically on their tourism and hospitality industry, and this disaster can ruin their income in the future (Wolf et al., 2022). In the study of Camilleri-Fenech et al. (2020), the hotel industry is producing a vast number of environmental hazards and food waste in Malta island. As environmental hazards and food waste are directly affecting climate change (Reisch et al.,2021), therefore, the importance of climate education and climate awareness is important for tourism stakeholders such as hotel managers. Although climate change education is relatively important and “people are aware of the importance of environmental sustainability, there is less evidence that they have the skills to translate such awareness into actions that contribute to more sustainable ways of living.” (Reimers, 2021, p. 8).