Sustainability criteria for hotel management in small and medium-sized organizations

Abstract

Tourism is one of the most important contemporary sectors and, in its scope, the hospitality sector stands out because of its power of local transformation, due to sociocultural, economic and environmental impacts on the localities. Thus, the conduction of a sustainable management system becomes vital to maximize its positive effects and minimize the negative ones, besides establishing a balance between owners and hospitality stakeholders. However, considering that this segment is mostly composed by small and midsized enterprises that lack expertise in dealing with this theme, a set of 39 sustainability criteria are presented here, distributed among the following dimensions: (11) environmental, (10) social, (4) cultural, (8) economic, and (6) political. Therefore, this paper exposed parameters for the operationalization of these criteria, through exploratory-descriptive research structured from a qualitative approach conducted by in-depth interviews carried out with six hotel managers – located in the states of São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro – whose perceptions were treated by Bardin's content analysis. The results offer an operational overview for small and medium-sized hotel companies to act as agents of local transformation, positively impacting the actors that support their production systems.

Keywords
Hotel Management; Sustainability Criteria; Small and Midsized Hospitality System