A study on sustainable consumption practices in Sri Lanka hotel sector

Abstract

Tourism is becoming a very important sector in the Sri Lankan economic development, with the end of the 30 year conflect situation. it is reported that 7.9% of ther GDP of Sri Lanka is contributed by the travel and tourism At the same time the tourism industry is one of the highest consumers of energy and natural resources and could become a cause of much envir nmen a an social concern if proper conservation measures are not implemented to reduce the rain on e country s resources. In order to address the above issue, a project called "Greening Sri Lankan Hotels* by tbe Cevlon Chamber of Commerce, under the EU funded Asia program. While the "Greening Sri Lankan Hotels” project has a target of addressing the hotels in the whole country, for the current study, a few hotels where the data was available and the potential for saving could be estimated one were selected. The study showed that even in the more sustainability- conscious hotels, there is room for improving the situation by better practices as well as better choice of equipment. It was found that on average about 30?o of the water consumption and 17% of electricity consumption can be reduced in the three hotels studied. The suggested interventions to achieve such savings would have relatively short payback periods, thus making them worthwhile. They would also reduce the carbon foot print by an average of about 26?o.