Environmental sustainability in hotels, theoretical and methodological contribution

Abstract The environmental sustainability is a multidisciplinary subject and its scope has attracted the attention of researchers from various fields of knowledge. In this perspective, the environmental management in the hotel industry stands out for two aspects: first, the economic importance of the hotels, a key element of the tourism sector, and second, the environmental impacts generated that need to be managed. Thus, it is important to examine how this subject has been addressed by the academia. In this sense, the objective of this research, exploratory and descriptive in nature, consists of mapping the theme of sustainability management in hotels, according to the delimitations set by researchers. To accomplish this purpose, we used the Knowledge Development Process - Constructivist (ProKnow-C). At the end of the survey, 13 articles were identified, published in international journals within the framework established by the researchers. The development of the Bibliographic Portfolio (BP) has taken into account some aspects: (i) relevance and adherence to the theme of the articles; (ii) proposals and results obtained in the research; (iii) theoretical and methodological contribution of the research published in the BP items. The results show that the topic is relevant and current, and that it lacks a structured process to evaluate the environmental management, in order to support management decisions.