An Assessment of Environmental Performance of Accommodation Sector with Focus on 5 and 4 Star Hotels: The Case of TRNC

ABSTRACT: Tourism industry considered as a complicated industry made of various sectors which have been established at the core of the global economy. Thus considering its role on a sustainable base, militate against any short sighted approach to its system and processes that embedded in its structure and operation. Accommodation sector as the vital and essential part of tourism industry captures a highly measurable and expansive portion of tourism business in terms of energy use and environmental impact. Therefore, focusing on accommodation sector and its environmental performance is a convincing research agenda among tourism scholars, and this study is not short of such aim. For this purpose, this study focused on hotels in the case of TRNC to explore the accommodation sector’s management toward this aim in their conduct. To evaluate and explore the management’s approach to environmental performance, the research covers Five and Four star hotels (i.e., 50 establishments) in the cities of Lefkosa, Kyrenia, Famagusta and Karpaz region. Survey questionnaires that were administered to the managers in their respected hotels contained four dimensions: environmental protection, solid waste management, purchasing activities, and energy use. Responses on each dimension, captured by several attribute that clearly stated in the survey questions. The main assumption is that the greening of the hotel sector plays a decisive role in achieving the aims of sustainable tourism system in the destination (i.e., in this case, TRNC). Although the similar study approach in other cases did not utilize any hypothesis; however, this study applied hypothesis testing in the case of TRNC, which all of the hypothesis supported by the outcome of the data analysis. Keywords: Eco-Hotel, Green Hotel, Sustainable Destination, Management; TRNC. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………