Sustainability in the Malawian Hotel Industry: Lessons for other Developing Countries

AbstractFollowing the Cape Town Declaration on responsible tourism in 2002, there has been a growing call for the global tourism and hospitality industry to step up efforts geared towards the realization of sustainable... [ view full abstract ]

Abstract

Following the Cape Town Declaration on responsible tourism in 2002, there has been a growing call for the global tourism and hospitality industry to step up efforts geared towards the realization of sustainable development goals. Various firms, largely hotels and accommodation firms, have responded to such calls by adopting sustainability agenda. While evidence suggests that sustainability is increasingly being considered as a fundamental issue in hospitality and tourism operations in most parts of the developed world, firms in the developing world are lagging behind their counterparts in the developed countries. Equally, a review of tourism and hospitality literature shows that scholarly attention is often on understanding the implementation of sustainability agenda in the developed countries. Yet, empirical studies on how hospitality firms engage with sustainability in the developing countries where such an agenda is needed the most are largely limited. Within the global hotel industry, recent evidence suggests that the degree to which hotels may be engaged in sustainability agenda may, among other factors which have received adequate scholarly attention, depend on the nature of the business operating models that a given hotel pursues. These models exist in four principal forms: owner operated, leasing, management contract/agreement and franchising. The balance of power between different parties (owners, operators and franchisee and franchisor) can determine the level of hotel’s engagement with sustainability agenda. In spite of this, there has been a dearth of studies that have investigated this dynamic. Using a qualitative methodology and drawing insights from neo-institutional theory, this paper addresses this knowledge gap by first exploring the sustainability initiative of four selected hotels in Malawi. We also do so by examining how different operating models in the Malawian hotel industry influence the hotel’s level of engagement with the sustainability agenda. Our findings demonstrate that a broad based sustainability agenda is slowly being pursued by certain hotels although corporate philanthropy remains the major area of focus for the majority of the considered firms. The strong focus on philanthropic based sustainability initiatives suggests a mere desire of these hotels to gain social legitimacy. The findings of this study further reveal that, in terms of business operating models, two major forms exist: management agreements and owner-operated hotels, with hotels that operate under management agreement being more likely to have a high level of engagement with a broad-based sustainability agenda than those that are owner operated. This finding reflects the fact that the latter involve well-known brands which focus on maintaining a good reputation of having a strong orientation towards a wider sustainability agenda. Overall, this paper suggests that hospitality and tourism scholarship can benefit from combining insights drawn from hotel business operating models and neo-institutional theory to gain a new and better understanding of hotels’ engagement with sustainability in a developing country context.   

Key words    Hotel         Institutions    Philanthropy   Sustainability  Tourism