Environmental Enrichment for the Lodging Industry

Floor diagram laying out an hypothetical hotel

The virtual hotel tour: explore environmental impact by floor plan (e.g. Front Desk, Housekeeping, Recreation) or action (e.g. Energy Management, Water Conservation, Purchasing).

This program aims to help YOU, the owner, operator or employee of a hospitality facility. The environmental impact and costs of tourism and hospitality (including restaurants) have become the object of intense interest within the industry, within government, and among the general public.

Lodging and the Environment: Natural Allies

There are good reasons for you to be deeply interested in the environmental impact of your hotel or restaurant. These considerations are divided among:

Practical Day-to-Day Improvements

This program aims at improving the day-to-day operation and maintenance of hospitality and food service facilities. Simple decisions and reasonable precautions can save you money, improve the quality of experience for your patrons, and ensure the sustainability of your location as an attraction and environmental asset.
To do this the program will lead you room by room through a "virtual hotel", demonstrating environmental concerns and opportunities in each location. There are 360-degree room panoramas that allow you to view and assess these opportunities.
You can then assess your own situation through ten interactive questionnaires, locating those improvements that will have the most beneficial results for the environment, for your guests, and for your own operations.

Sensible Long-Term Planning

There are, of course, large issues and impacts of hospitality facilities and tourism that occur at the broad planning level. These center around the direct and indirect impacts of facilities location and construction, along with the recreational activities associated with them. Careful decisions about location and design can also increase the value of your facility, enrich your patrons' experience and ensure the future of your site as an attraction and environment asset. These considerations are not covered in detail in this program, but here is a preliminary matrix of potential impacts and mitigative measures, and sample links to some eco-tourism sites.

Constructive Eco-Tourism

According to the World Conservation Union (1996) Ecotourism is: "...environmentally responsible travel and visitation to relatively undisturbed natural areas, in order to enjoy and appreciate nature (and any accompanying cultural features - both past and present) that:

promotes conservation
has low negative visitor impact
provides for beneficially active socioeconomic involvement of local populations

Ecotourism builds upon the beauty and interest of the environmental and local cultures as major attractions for tourism. It can operate at and of several levels, ranging from easy access and information on local environmental attractions to very close and intense personal interaction with local cultures and organizations in enjoying, monitoring and improving the local environment. For further information click here for ecotourism.

Note: This program is based upon the experience of hospitality owners, operators and employees in many different situations in many different countries. It is offered to you as a sample of possible approaches; there is no one way to run an environmentally sound hotel or restaurant. Your patrons or your government may have particular interests or requirements. Take and use those things that are helpful for your own situation.

Also available in Spanish as Enriquecimiento Ambiental para la Industria Hotelera: Una Herramienta

Created: 2002 by Renee Gunn, Susan Childress, Wei Wu, and Keith Sullivan, all of Purdue University; and Alfred Krause and Glynis Zywicki of USEPA.

Audiences:

owner, operator or employee of a hospitality facility
Innkeepers
Hotel and Motel Managers
Resort Operators
Cruise Ship Operators
Bed & Breakfast Owners
Groundskeepers
Housekeping Management and Hotel Staff

Download and install the software

All you need to view the program is a Web browser
Download the program. Two versions are available:
- Environmental Enrichment for the Lodging Industry - hotel.zip (compressed file, 3.6MB, unzips to 4.2MB)
- Enriquecimiento Ambiental para la Industria Hotelera: Una Herramienta - spanhotel.zip (compressed file, 3.7MB, unzips to 4.3MB)
Double-click the file to uncompress and install the program. We suggest saving it to C:\Program Files\seahome\hotel\ or C:\Program Files\seahome\spanhotel\
Start your browser and choose File > Open > C:\Program Files\seahome\hotel\src\title.htm
To start the Spanish version, choose File > Open > C:\Program Files\seahome\spanhotel\src\title.htm

View the software online

The material you are about to view is a product of Purdue University.

This environmental software program was produced by Purdue University under a cooperative agreement with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Although this material was prepared in collaboration with EPA, Purdue University is the author, holds the exclusive copyright, and is solely responsible for its content subject to the terms of the cooperative agreemeent. Limitations under the copyright, which allows for free reproduction and distribution of the software, can be found on the program's title page.

EPA continues to work with Purdue University in developing new environmental software and updating older material, and we appreciate being notified of any errors or other issues.

View Environmental Enrichment for the Lodging Industry on Purdue's Web site