Please note that this is an on-going project.
Project Description
This project examines how hotel employees are represented in research on environmental sustainability initiatives in the hospitality sector. Its central aim is to explore whether current green hotel strategies genuinely account for the perspectives, knowledge, and day-to-day experiences of the employees expected to implement them. Drawing on a Systematic Quantitative Literature Review of 103 studies published between 2019 and 2024, the project investigates how environmental sustainability in hotels is framed in the academic literature and where important gaps remain.
The project involved systematically searching, screening, and analysing peer-reviewed literature on green hotels, sustainability practices, and employee engagement. The review identified dominant themes, theoretical approaches, and methodological trends and examined how studies addressed staff participation, management responsibility, training, and implementation challenges. Particular attention was given to the gap between top-down sustainability policies and the realities of everyday workplace practice in hotels.
The findings highlighted that, although employees are widely recognised as essential to the success of green initiatives, most studies continue to privilege management perspectives. It also identified persistent barriers, including limited training, inadequate resources, scepticism about symbolic green practices, and insufficient attention to employees’ own motivations and agency. Overall, the project argues that meaningful environmental progress in hospitality depends on moving beyond policy rhetoric and embedding employee voices at the centre of green strategy, decision-making, and future research.
Project Personnel and Beneficiaries
The project engages with the wider body of hospitality researchers whose work was reviewed in order to assess how employee perspectives are currently represented in the literature.
The project benefits several groups. It benefits hotel employees by arguing for greater recognition of their knowledge, participation, training, and support needs in sustainability initiatives. It also benefits hotel managers and organisations by identifying how green strategies can be made more effective through stronger employee engagement. More broadly, the hospitality sector benefits from clearer insight into how environmental sustainability can move from policy aspiration to practical implementation, with wider environmental benefits.
Outcomes to Date
Journal Article in Current Issues in Tourism (ABDC – Ranked A).
Presentation at the Annual Council for Australasian Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE) Conference in 2025
Project Significance
The project addresses a major weakness in current research and practice in hospitality sustainability. Although hotels are under increasing pressure to reduce emissions, conserve resources, and adopt greener operations, the success of these measures depends heavily on employees, who implement them in everyday work. The review shows that employee perspectives remain underexplored, even though staff are central to whether environmental initiatives succeed or fail. Much of the existing literature privileges management priorities while giving insufficient attention to employees’ knowledge, motivation, training needs, and lived experience of implementing green practices.
The project further highlights a persistent gap between sustainability policy and practical implementation in hotels. It identifies key barriers, including limited training and resources; uncertainty about what sustainability means in day-to-day practice; and scepticism towards initiatives perceived as symbolic rather than genuine. The project shows that meaningful environmental change requires employee participation, ownership, and voice, providing a stronger foundation for more effective, realistic sustainability strategies in the hospitality sector.
In terms of the Sustainable Development Goals, the project contributes most directly to SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production by supporting the better implementation of resource-saving practices, such as energy, water, and waste management, in hotels. It also contributes to SDG 13 Climate Action by strengthening the human dimensions of environmental action in a carbon-intensive industry. In addition, it aligns with SDG 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth because it emphasises employee engagement, training, workplace support, and more inclusive decision-making as necessary conditions for sustainable organisational change.