REFLECTIVE JOURNAL

5.4 Discuss issues related to sustainable development in tourism and hospitality industry

The issue that needs to be discussed in tourism is that we as people who work and deal with people need to be more mature and think more about giving more than just what our customers ask for. Customers often ask for what they want, but we can provide more than what they ask for. For example, situations where the hotel where we work requires more services such as room cleaning, food preparation and room cleaning services. Therefore, we as a generation of vision 2020 need to prepare ourselves for whatever comes our way, whether easy or difficult. We need to think about the country's future. The industry is also changing from time to time. The service will also improve the convenience and needs of our customers as well as ourselves. The tourism and hospitality departments are in need of talented and not-so-talented workers. To the students of tourism, I hope you do not give up easily and thrive on pursuing the learning that exists at their institution. Things that look like positive or negative need to take their weight off to improve the situation. As the saying goes, "success ladder" means to continue to do better without looking back to see the past.

The hospitality industry is starting to take responsibility for environmental sustainability. A strong focus on energy, waste, and water usage is directly linked with financial benefits in the operation of the hoteliers. Practices connected to the social aspect of sustainability are less developed. The dominant utilitarian paradigm in managers’ decisions is a strong causal factor in the lack of systematic social activities. The economic driver seems to be too strong! The suggested research agenda will enable us to better explain this phenomenon in which companies include sustainable development in their strategy – as long as the benefits are visible. In this agenda a broad definition of sustainability is needed and more attention should be paid to the different stakeholders. Next to this stakeholder perspective also additional approaches such as change management are necessary. In line with this multiple-perspective approach both qualitative and quantitative methods to research the practices in and the motives for a more sustainable hospitality industry, are needed. Finally to understand motives and actual behaviour of employee and guest toward sustainable alternatives, more experiment research designs are needed.