Gestão e Educação Ambiental em Hotéis de Uberlândia (MG)

Abstract

The growing pressures of society for more sustainable attitudes that can reduce environmental damage, as well as high competitiveness among organizations, has required companies to adapt more and more to external demands to remain in the market. Taking into account the relevance of tourism activity to the global economy, as well as the impacts generated by it, especially the hotel sector, it is fundamental to study how companies in this field have acted to conform to legal and social requirements for more sustainable services. Owing to the urgent need to deal with environmental issues and to promote environmentally responsible processes, it is extremely important to know the local reality, identifying failures, obstacles and needs, in order to contribute, through the promotion of awareness and the proposal of solutions, for the development of activities that preserve nature and promote the quality of life. The main objective of this study is to understand the environmental practices developed by the hotels in Uberlândia - MG, from the perspective of the managers of these establishments. For this, the study was divided in two stages, the first with an exploratory character aims at the contextualization and approach of themes related to the core of the study; the second consists of a qualitative approach, necessary for the identification and analysis of environmental preservation actions promoted in hotel establishments. It was selected to participate in this study only the hotels of the city of Uberlândia that are regular on the Ministry of Tourism, by means of registration in the Cadastur - System of Registration of individuals and legal entities that operate in the tourism sector, mandatory to all hosting establishment. The sample of this study is represented by 16 hotels, however, agreed to participate in this survey five hotels. As a way to enrich the research and to embrace all hotels of the sample, it was opted to analyze the electronic pages of the 16 hotels, in order to identify how they address and disseminate the sustainable practices developed by them, since the information contained in the sites also reflects the establishment's position regarding sustainability. After consulting the sites and conducting interviews with the hotel managers, it was found that, despite several actions developed by hotel establishments, with the objective of reducing both environmental impacts and promoting cost savings, practices are still incipient and punctual, being carried out in a decontextualized way, without planning. None of the establishments monitors environmental performance, and there is no global control over the environmental performance of the organization. Therefore, it was concluded that, despite the presence of several sustainable hotel practices, which are essential for the reduction of environmental impacts, participating hotels still lack integrated management of these processes, with a policy that establishes the environmental goals and objectives. There are also insufficient, and in some cases nonexistent, Environmental Education programs that effectively sensitize employees and guests to environmental issues. For this reason, the implementation of an Environmental Management System can represent a great step towards the improvement of the environmental performance of hotels, being fundamental in this process the commitment of the top management to guarantee continuous improvement.