Summary:
A growing hotel sector makes a significant environmental footprint. Due to a contemporary focus on climate change and high competition within tourism, enhancing sustainability through energy savings is a priority for many hotels. Through technological innovations, Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology provides the opportunity to integrate more systems (e.g., heating, air-conditioning, window-openings) on a platform (also known as smart management), making it easy for a hotel guest to operate room conditions through a single device while also optimizing hotel operations. A research gap on the likelihood of adopting IoT technology to pursue sustainability in the hotel sector exists. Based on explorative case studies of five high-end hotels, this paper offers propositions on drivers for hotels’ use of IoT to deliver on their sustainability goals. This study suggests that a hotel is more inclined to implement IoT if (1) the hotel is focused on energy savings, e.g., due to green certificates; (2) it belongs to an international hotel group; (3) decision makers perceive sustainability to be important for their customers; (4) the target group is more B2B (business) than B2C (leisure); (5) the hotel a five star one; and (6) the hotel guests come from Northern Europe or North America.
Keywords: sustainability; Internet-of-Things; drivers; hotel industry; hotel management; smart management; smart devises; high-end hotel
JCR Impact Factor and WoS quartile: 2,576 - Q2 (2019); 3,300 - Q2 (2023)
DOI reference:
https://doi.org/10.3390/su11195372
Published on paper: October 2019.
Published on-line: September 2019.
Citation:
P. Eskerod, S. Hollensen, M.F. Morales Contreras, J. Arteaga-Ortiz, Drivers for pursuing sustainability through iot technology within high-end hotels—an exploratory study. Sustainability. Vol. 11, nº. 19, pp. 5372-1 - 5372-21, October 2019. [Online: September 2019]
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