Tourism towards sustainability: challenges and opportunities for the accommodation sector

Tourism contributes directly to over 5% of world GDP. At the same time, it has a significant impact in terms of climate change, generating around 6% of global CO2 emissions. Forecasts indicate that by 2035, emissions will increase by 160%. Accommodation is responsible for over 20% of these emissions (United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2011). In 2014 the tourism sector generated in Italy 10.1% of GDP (World Travel & Tourism Council, 2015). Given the economic and environmental relevance, it is essential to address strategies to mitigate its impact in terms of contribution to environmental degradation. Tourism is both polluter and concurrently a major victim of climate change. The tourism sub-sector of accommodation has voluntary policy instruments to reduce its environmental impacts: codes of conduct, best environmental practices, environmental performance indicators, environmental management systems and eco-labels. A critical issue for their diffusion is the capacity to capture and communicate to potential customers, more sensible to sustainability aspects. In addiction, in the last years, the growing number of eco-labels is leading to an increasing confusion among consumers. In this paper, we review the existing literature about firms’ and clients perception on tourism eco-labels, in order to figure out weak and beneficial aspect of their implementation. Considering the Italian context, we focus on the most widespread eco-labels for tourism: the EU-Ecolabel and Legambiente Tourism. The aim is to catch the differences and common points, figuring out their success outcomes. The output of the work will be a valuable tool to develop an empirical investigation on Italian accommodations that aims at increasing the ability to promote a sustainability path in the tourism accommodation sector.