Barriers to adoption of environmental management systems in hotels and their impact on environmental management practices level

With environmental management gaining importance in tourism, many national, regional, or international institutions and organizations have developed various environmental management systems and programs, especially for hotels. There are determining and motivating factors and some essential advantages that drive hotels to environmental management systems or adopting environmental management practices that can be carried out independently. Despite this, the adoption level of environmental management systems in hotels is deficient, and only 15% of hotels in Turkey follow the most common/popular environmental management systems. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the barriers behind 85% of hotels not adopting environmental management systems and the level of environmental management practices done in these hotels. From this point of view, the research aims to reveal the level at which barriers to environmental management systems affect environmental management practices in hotels. Also, in the research, it has been tried to determine barriers to participation in the environmental management systems for hotels, at what level the environmental management practices are carried out in hotels that do not have any official environmental management system, and whether there is a relationship between the barriers of environmental management system and the level of environmental management practices. The research sample consists of middle and senior managers of 872 hotel businesses that do not have any official environmental management system. The questionnaire technique was used as the data collection method in the quantitatively designed research, and the data collection process was carried out online between February 01 and May 08, 2021. In the analysis of data, validity, and reliability analysis, KMO test, Barlett-sphericity test, explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis, scree test; percentage, frequency, arithmetic means and standard deviation values for descriptive data; correlation analysis and structural equation model were used in the relationship measurements, and t-test and ANOVA, which are parametric tests, were used to determine the differences between the variables. As a result of the research, it was determined that barriers to environmental management systems negatively affect the level of environmental management practices in hotels, while the level of environmental management system barriers is high, whereas the level of environmental management practices is low. Keywords: Hotel establishments, environmental management system, barriers of environmental management systems, environmental management practices.