Marriott Hotels And Resorts: Sustainability Goals And Strategies Essay.

About Marriott Hotels and Resorts

Marriott Hotels and Resorts is referred to the brand launched by Marriott International which is a full-service based hotels and resorts based in the Bathesda, Maryland, the United States. The brand was founded in the year 1957 by J. Willard Marriott and as of the year 2020, the company has 582 hotels and resorts with over 203,053 rooms which are operating under the brand. In addition to that they have around 160 hotels with 47,765 rooms which are planned for the development as well. The Marriott Hotel and Resort chain started with two motels in 1950s, where the first one was situation in Quality Inn Airport motel nearby Washington, D.C. and another nearby the Twin Bridges (csr-marriott 2022).

The strategic plans with respect to the sustainability orientation or implementation which Marriott Hotels and Resorts have implemented are based on the 2025 Sustainability and Social Impact Goals which guides the path for them to have a sustainable and positive impact. They have designed these goals in order to support the meaningful progress for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are for addressing the critical challenges which the communities and planet are facing at present. For the Nurture purpose, the organisation has a goal to contribute fifteen million hours of the volunteer service in order to support the community engagement and company priorities strategy along with that 80% of their managed hotel will participate within the community service activities as well as 50% of the reported volunteer activities will be based on skills (Higgins Desbiolles, Moskwa and Wijesinghe 2019).

For their empower through opportunities agenda, they have a goal to invest a minimum of $35 million in order to deepen and increase the partnership and programs which will create hospitality opportunities and skills within the diverse population, youth, people with disabilities, women, refugees and veterans along with achieving a parity of gender representation for their global company leadership. For their sustainable responsibility operations agenda, they have the goal to reduce their global environmental footprint by 15%, 30%, 45% and 50% throughout their portfolio along with that 100% of their MI hotels will possess a sustainability certification as well as 650 of their hotels will opt for LEED certification or its equivalent by the year 2025 and they will responsibly source almost 95% of their top ten priority categories (Guix and Font 2020).

For their advanced human right agenda, they have adopted the goals of making 100% of their on-property associated to have completed their training in human rights which includes awareness for human trafficking, recruitment practices and policies and responsible sourcing along with enhancing the human rights criteria for recruitment as well as sourcing policies at the work to address the human rights risks which are present at the construction phase. In addition to that they have set the goal of promoting a peaceful world by travel through investing $500,000 within the partnership which evaluates, drives and elevates the tourism and travelling’ role within a cultural understanding (Shen, Qian and Chen 202).

Marriott's 2025 Sustainability and Social Impact Goals

For their sustain responsibility operations, Marriott Hotels and Resorts have integrated sustainability throughout their value chain and for the mitigation of the climate related risk, where they are working to decrease their environment impact, source responsibly and operate sustainable hotels. For reducing their environmental impact, they have aimed to minimise their environment footprint by sustainable management of water and energy utilisation, carbon emission, reducing waste and increasing utilisation of the renewable energy (Rezapouraghdam, Alipour and Arasli 2019).

They have employed various innovative technologies to implement, plan, communicate and track to operate in a responsible manner to mitigate the risks of climate, benefiting the communities where they are operating and businesses. In the year 2019, they have reduced their water intensity almost by 0.15% and carbon intensity by about 8.58%, they have also taken the initiative to discard the single use toiletries with that of large and pump topped bottles. After implementing this initiative, they have prevented almost 500 million single use toiletry bottle on an annual basis from going into landfill wastes. They have also implemented resources and tools for internal food waste reduction (Liu, Nie and Li 2016).

The organisation has also built and operated their own sustainable hotels, where from the designing to the ultimate guest experience, sustainability will be present within their business strategy. They have collaborated with their associated, franchisees, hotel owners, suppliers, brands, guests and business partners in order to actively decrease the environmental impact and its risk to the business by operating and constructing sustainable hotels. Their goals is that all of their hotels will be recognised by the sustainability standards as well as its certification, 650 of the hotels will pursue towards LEED or equivalent form of certification and developing a new global headquarters which will be achieved through the LEED Gold Certification. In the year 2019, 36% of their properties have been certified as per the recognised sustainability standards, 294 of their hotels are presently pursuing or have achieved the LEED, BREEAM or Estidama Certification and 180 of the hotels are open adaptive reutilised (Jones, Hillier and Comfort 2016).

Another of their strategy is to source responsibly, where they have committed towards the integration of the leading social and environment practices within the supply chain as well as partnership with similar minded suppliers. They have aimed towards decreasing the negative social and environment impact of the business activities by emphasising on the responsibility, sustainability and local sourcing aspect. Their goal is to responsibly source more than 95% of their top 10 priority categories by the year 2025, where the top 10 categories priority are bottled water, animal protein, cocoa, cleaning supplies, coffee, guest room amenities, sugar, textiles and seafood (Flori?i? 2020).

Sustainability Integration and Operations

In the year 2019, they made a progress by undertaking 70.56% of the Forest Stewardship Council-certified products of personal paper, 30% of the Marine Stewardship Council or the seafood from Aquaculture Stewardship Council-certified along with 55.1% of the eggs procurement from cage-free sources by the United States based properties for their commitment. Almost 91% of the furniture, equipment, and fixtures are purchased from the suppliers who are opted for reduce, reuse, or recycle packaging (Jones, Hillier and Comfort 2017).

For the hotels and resorts, it is a major challenges to expand through the eco-friendly and green products and services. The hospitality industry is undergoing a shift with the focus on the robust approach on the sustainability aspect. Starting from better management of water and energy consumption, toward achieving the responsible tourism and business. In an effort to appropriately measure the impact which they are landing as well as giving a transparency to their customers, employees and investors, the companies have already started to scrutinise their sustainability practice and from adopting symbolic initiative toward adopting practices which will combat the climate changes. With the support of the technology, the companies are already under covering their actual environment impact and opting for quantifiable and less tangible and indirect emission which are impact the planet (Modica et al. 2020).

In order to be sustainable in their operation, the hospitality business’ first step is to adopt the eco-friendly and green products and services, although, it does not ensure the genuine efforts from the business. Often the hospitality businesses adopt such concepts in order to attract the guests, although there are often lack of validation and equivalence from these claims. There is lack of homogeneity in order to verify the claims which they made and due to lack of consistency when it comes to presently presenting the organic and eco-friendly products, such claims are often made for the sole purpose of attracting the environment conscious guests. There are often no standards for quality control within the hospitality industry when it comes to the establishment of the licensing and labelling (Smit and Melissen 2018).

In order to produce the green products, recycled and renewable material are required which are highly costly. For bringing sustainability with the organisation, they will required the green product or service or green technology or green power or energy for that they will required higher investment within the research and development programs for the development as well as subsequent promotion of their program that will ultimately lead towards an increased cost. The potential challenge of such an initiative is that information relating to the greenness are not reliable and adequately available (Melissen and Sauer 2018).

Responsibly Sourcing Materials

Natural capital is referred the stock of the natural assets that includes soil, air, water, geology and other living beings, which organisations utilised in order to derive a wider range of service, from the ecosystem service, that enables the human life. Marriott Hotels and Resorts source responsibly as they are committed for integrating the leading social and environmental practices within the supply chain as well as partnering with the similar minded suppliers. They have aimed towards reduction of the negative social and environment impact of the business activities by emphasising on the responsibility, sustainability and local sourcing (Horng et al. 2018).

Their aim is to support the mitigation of the direct as well as indirect environment impact of the business where they have promoted and invested into the innovation and conservation initiatives. They have managed and franchised 4,100 properties within 79 countries as well as territories globally with their presence through ‘Spirit To Preserve’ environmental strategy in order to drive the economic opportunity which will inspire conscious building of sustainable hotel. They have made investment within the strategic conservation initiatives which they started in the year 2007 as one of their significant projects which includes their project of Juma REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) Amazon rainforest project in Brazil, China, and a mangrove restoration project in Thailand and the Nobility of Nature fresh water conservation project in Sichuan Province. Their goal through their environmental strategy is to extend their contribution outside of their hotel and resorts door and in order to invest in them they have portrayed leadership, action and innovation in order to develop a healthier planet, address the critical environment challenges, invest with the natural capital resource projects as well as engagement of the stakeholder (Hossain, Kannan and Raman Nair 2021).

The influential factor which affects the adoption of the environmentally friendly innovation within the hospitality industry is the management’s commitment which reveals that the utilisation of the technology when it comes handling the activities of hotel business was crucial along with monitoring their performance of environmental management. It is essential for the managers to embrace the technology within the execution of the hotel activities as well as monitoring of the environmental management performance in order to make sure that sustainability is present within the business. The competitive advantage which has been seen after the implementation of the environmental management practices through the green marketing strategy helps in the development of competitive advantage to the hotel by increasing the satisfaction level of the customers (Horng et al. 2016).

Empowering Diverse Populations

While sourcing their food ingredients from the local communities, the sustainability is enhances while even practicing corporate social activities. Several managers have stated that an increase within the guests who are demanding green lifestyle, would influence the implementation of sustainability practices within the organisation. Managers plays a major role when it comes to the training of their employees on the environmental management practices which makes them to be eco-friendly, incentivising the outstanding employees on the adoption of green practices as well as including the environmental management as one of the criteria for recruitment. The manager even train the new employees on the environmental conservation culture as well as brief them on the daily environmental management issues which are crucial for the attainment of the business sustainability. Manager helps in bringing a positive effect on the hotel business sustainability which increases the guest satisfaction, enhancement of the brand image, and benefits in the financial form, gaining a larger share market and increase in employee and customer satisfaction (Sobaih et al. 2021).

References

csr-marriott, 2022. Sustainable Goals | Marriott International Serve360 - csr-marriott. [online] csr-marriott. Available at: <https://serve360.marriott.com/sustainable-goals/> [Accessed 28 March 2022].

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Higgins-Desbiolles, F., Moskwa, E. and Wijesinghe, G., 2019. How sustainable is sustainable hospitality research? A review of sustainable restaurant literature from 1991 to 2015. Current Issues in Tourism, 22(13), pp.1551-1580.

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Hossain, M.S., Kannan, S.N. and Raman Nair, S.K.K., 2021. Factors influencing sustainable competitive advantage in the hospitality industry. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 22(6), pp.679-710.

Jones, P., Hillier, D. and Comfort, D., 2016. Sustainability in the hospitality industry: Some personal reflections on corporate challenges and research agendas. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Jones, P., Hillier, D. and Comfort, D., 2017. The sustainable development goals and the tourism and hospitality industry. Athens Journal of Tourism, 4(1), pp.7-18.

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Melissen, F. and Sauer, L., 2018. Improving sustainability in the hospitality industry. Routledge.

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