EMPIRICAL APPLICATION OF THE GREEN HOTEL RATING

Abstract

The paper is based on the general conceptual framework of the green hotel rating system Shieh et al, proposed in 2012. We apply this conceptual framework to compare 7 well-known green hotel rating programs, including Green Leaf in North America; Green Seal in the US, Canada's Green Key, the EU's Eco-label and Green Key, Britain's Green Tourism Business Scheme, China's Green Hotel Standard, and LEED. This study finds all 7 green hotel rating programs to date are voluntary, meaning that they are not imposed on tourism businesses by the government or in any other way. Besides, almost all of these 7 rating programs currently have no clear criteria for evaluation to emphasize the ecological conservation dimension, especially in non-ionizing radiation (environmental protection); wildlife conservation, wildlife habitat protection and biodiversity (natural conservation); and ecological engineering method (building infrastructure).