Green hotel development: Towards the building of resilient cities in Ghana

Abstract

In recent times, there have been concerns about how hotels are negatively impacting on the environment both globally and locally. Hotels have been tasked to reduce such ecological footprints by managing the environment in cities. Responding to such concerns, this paper therefore presents an empirical study on how the tourism industry in Ghanaian cities specifically hotels contribute to creating resilient, healthy and vital cities. Previous studies conducted on the tourism and hospitality industry have revealed its trending pressure on land-use and infrastructure development, over consumption of resources, the generation of waste and air pollution. The industry is known to consume a considerable amount of natural resources, both in its developmental and operational stages. Tourism is therefore described as an extractive industry as it operates by making use of environmental resource and transforming them for sale in consumer markets. Using the purposive sampling technique, the highest star-rated hotels in a city named Koforidua in Ghana were selected as case studies. Top management of these hotels, together with officials from the relevant Government Actors were interviewed. The results of the study indicated that these hotels in the city were environmentally cautious as far as promoting resilient and vital cities is concerned. The observations and interviews showed that they were in the business of building resilience in areas such as effective solid and liquid waste management methods, renewable energy development, green designs, energy efficiency and water conservation, green environmental regulation compliance. This study seeks to advice policy makers, management of hotels sand government institutions in charge of environmental management to develop an approach in promoting hotel’s operation, which will be integrating environmental respect and awareness with economy and quality production. In short, it promotes a compatible organizational culture portraying an employee awareness and involvement in the protection of the environment.