Is there a Benefit from being Green? Assessing Benefits from MarketingSustainability by North American Hotels

Abstract

The purpose of this research study was to determine if green hotels actually benefited from undertaking environmental practices and integrating these practices into their marketing strategy. After looking at sustainable communications and marketing literature, a total of 2,248 structured surveys were administered to hotels across North America. Responses from 247 hotels (11% response rate) were analyzed using frequencies, t-tests, and regression analysis to examine significant differences. The results show that the extent to which hotels perceive they benefitted from marketing sustainability practices through guest visits, guest length of stay, guest satisfaction, revenue, profit, and average daily rate can be predicted by examining the extent to which a hotel believes that green marketing has been incorporated into a hotels green marketing strategy. Findings also show that hotels that are a part of the Green Key certification program have a higher perceived probability of attracting new customers and retaining old ones. This study provides support that there is a benefit to sustainability marketing and this study is the first to examine how perceived hotel sustainability management and marketing inform one another and could be beneficial to hotels in how they utilize this information to inform marketing decisions.