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IJCHM 21,5

Environmental measures for hotels environmental management systems

ISO 14001
Wilco W. Chan
School of Hotel and Tourism Management, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Abstract
Purpose Implementation of environmental management systems (EMS) in hotels is gaining popularity world-wide. ISO 14001, which is the only certifying document in the ISO 14000 series, provides guidelines to set up an EMS. However, there is a paucity of information about the actual environmental measures implemented in ISO 14001 certied hotels. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and generalize the environmental measures undertaken by studied hotels and to evaluate the performance of these environmental measures. Design/methodology/approach Three case studies were carried out to identify the green measures undertaken in ISO 14001-certied hotels. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected and analyzed. Then, regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between monthly utilities input (electricity, gas, fuel oil and water) and activity parameters. Findings A total of 113 measures were identied, nearly half of which concern energy conservation. Results of multiple regression showed that R 2 for different utilities varied. The explanatory power of equation was strong for electricity consumption, moderate for fuel gas consumption, and weak for both gas and water consumption. Practical implications The identied measures provide hoteliers with a thorough picture about the actual environmental works involved in this internationally recognized EMS. Hotel operators and owners can use these measures as a reference either for applying EMS certication or for developing their own EMS. Originality/value The paper, which was based on operational experiences from existing hotels, was a collaborative work between hospitality industry practitioners and educators. The paper is also the rst of its kind to unveil the comprehensive environmental measures undertaken in city hotels with ISO 14001 certication. Keywords Environmental management, Hotels, Energy Paper type Research paper

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Received 1 October 2007 Revised 27 December 2007, 21 June 2008, 9 September 2008 Accepted 9 December 2008

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Vol. 21 No. 5, 2009 pp. 542-560 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0959-6119 DOI 10.1108/09596110910967791

Introduction Environmental Management System (EMS) as across the world has recently been more recognized in the hotel industry. An environment management system is a way for management to deal with aspects that impact on the environment. It allows an organization to control the impact of its activities, products or services on the natural
Support for the author from Mr Tamiyasu Okawa and Mr Jean-Marie Leclercq, the present general manager and ex-general manager respectively of The Hotel Nikko Hong Kong, Ms Paddy Lui, K. Wah Group and Mr Tan H. is gratefully acknowledged.

environment. Steger (2000) dened an EMS as a transparent and systematic process, known corporate-wide, with the purpose of prescribing and implementing environmental goals, policies and responsibilities, as well as a regular auditing of its elements. Almost all hotels have implemented their in-house EMS or used efforts on protecting the environment in hotels with varying degrees of intensity in the past few decades (Stipanuk, 1996). Kirks survey found that the major benet of environmental management was the improvement in public image and better relationship with the local community (Kirk, 1995). However, many hoteliers with written environmental policy saw the major benet in nancial management performance. The ISO 14000, which is a series of international standards on environmental management, provides guidelines for the development of an EMS and the supporting audit programme, as shown in Table I. It was introduced in 1996 as a result of the Rio Summit on the Environment held in 1992, and later a new version was published in 2004 (ISO, 2007). Within the entire series, the most well known ISO 14001 standard species the actual requirement for an EMS. An organization can be certied by an external certication authority against the ISO 14001 standard. The purpose of an EMS is clearly to bring a rm into alignment with its environmental policy and to demonstrate this to others (ISO, 1996). ISO 14001 certied EMS could be characterized in terms of its policy, goals, objectives, organizational structure, assigned responsibilities, procedures and operations, management review, and various methodologies. The EMS formed under the ISO14001 certication possesses a systematic structure as laid down in the ISO requirement. And the whole system is relatively open and familiar to environment-related practitioners since there have been immense promotional coverage, workshops, seminars and literature. Up to the end of 2005, there were over 110,000 ISO 14001 certied organizations worldwide, including around 600 hospitality organizations (ISO, 2006). Recently some deluxe hotels such as the Shangri-la Hotel, Hotel Nikko, and Grand Stanford Inter-Continental Hong Kong have achieved ISO 14001 accreditation. The same trend is happening in China. For instance, the Mission Hills Resort in Shenzhen and the World Trade Center Hotel in Hangzhou have also received the certication. Chan and Wong (2005) nd that corporate governance and legislation play an important role in affecting hotels intention to ISO14001 EMS certication. Their ndings are more or less close to the proponents who advocate setting up environmental standard in general business. They have proposed a number of reasons for why rms should seek certication, such as improved regulatory compliance; increased market share and a potential for premium pricing within certain market segments; response to customer pressures and access to markets; cost reductions from improved efciencies; and an enhanced reputation (Harrington and Knight, 1999; Tibor and Feldman, 1996, pp. 27-42; Woodside, 2000). However, there is a paucity of information about the actual environmental measures implemented in ISO14001 certied hotels. And these environmental measures may serve as useful reference for other hotel operators to drive their environmental works. In light of this situation, this study aims to identify the environmental measures undertaken by studied hotels, generalize environmental measures by hotels with ISO14001, and evaluate the performance and the assessment methods of these bundles of environmental measures.

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Environmental management ISO 14001 system (subcommittee 1) ISO 14004 Environmental auditing (subcommittee 2) ISO 14010 ISO 14011 ISO 14012 ISO 14011 ISO 14015 Environmental labeling (subcommittee 3) ISO 14020 ISO 14021 ISO 14024 ISO/TR 14025 Environmental performance evaluation (subcommittee 4) Life cycle assessment (subcommittee 5) ISO 14031 ISO/TR 14032 ISO 14040 ISO 14041 ISO 14042 ISO 14043 ISO/TS 14048 ISO/TR 14049

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Environmental management systems specications with guidance for use Environmental management systems general guidelines on principles, systems and supporting techniques Guidelines for environmental auditing general principles Guidelines for environmental auditing audit procedures auditing of environmental management systems Guidelines for environmental auditing qualication criteria for environmental auditors Guidelines for quality and/or environmental management systems auditing (this standard replaces ISO 14010, 14011 and 14012 since 2002) Environmental management environmental assessment of sites and organizations (EASO) Environmental labels and declarations general principles Environmental labels and declarations self-declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labeling) Environmental labels and declarations Type I environmental labeling guiding principles and procedures Environmental labels and declarations Type III environmental declarations Evaluation of environmental performance Examples of environmental performance evaluation Life cycle assessment principles and framework Life cycle assessment goal and scope denition and inventory analysis Life cycle assessment life cycle impact assessment Life cycle assessment life cycle interpretation Life cycle assessment data documentation format Life cycle assessment examples of application of ISO 14041 to goal and scope denition and inventory analysis

Table I. The ISO 14000 series of standards

Source: ISO (2002)

This paper has four sections. The rst section discusses the case study design and methodology including both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The qualitative research refers to the development of preliminary checklist of environmental measures, its subsequent validation and the ways to analyze collected data to explore any phenomenon. Then the paper proceeds to illustrate the quantitative study on the energy performance of the studied hotels by using four sorts of estimation technique.

The next section introduces some background information about the three studied hotels Nikki, Shangri-la and the Grand Stanford. In the third section, the paper discusses the identied environmental measures and assesses the energy saving potential resulting from the adoption of these measures. The concluding section highlights the use of the ndings to practitioners and offers ideas on ways that managers can make regression analysis more easy-to-use in the hotel. Methodology Case study design In hotel ISO 14001s areas, there has been little experience and data available, particularly regarding the environmental measures undertaken by certied hotels. Thus, intensive study of relevant cases was adopted to gain more insight into this phenomenon as well as to look into the intensity plus the characteristics of the studying EMS. By doing in this way, the study gathered sufcient information to characterize and explain the unique features of the cases, to point out the characteristics that are common in several cases (Stake, 1994; Cunningham, 1997) as well as to learn something new and important (Yin, 2003, pp. 15-16). Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed in these case studies. Develop prototype check-list To identify and validate the environmental measures undertaken by these three hotels, the study adopted a qualitative approach. First, earlier publications about hotels environmental work were used as prototypes for developing a checklist of environmental measures (International Hotels Environmental Initiatives (IHEI), 1996). The reviewed documentation also encompassed environmental management manuals, periodic reports, trade journals, CD-ROMs, training materials, energy consumption data sheets, energy-saving facilities catalogues, energy audit reports, energy conservation reports, and proposals for research ndings. Validity and accuracy check Multiple sources of evidence including documentation, interviews and physical artifacts were used as double check devices to ensure the construct of internal validity (Yin, 2003). During the interviews, the environmental measures being documented in the prototype check list were cross-checked and conrmed by hotel staff including the quality assurance manager, chief engineers, department managers, chief steward, and members of the hotels green committee. Then, physical artifacts of the environmental measures were observed as part of the eld visit. These sorts of repeated checking activities on data collected increase internal validity and objectivity of the study. Categorization based on 3R The study further captured and transcribed the relevant resources for setting up EMS, mentioned in the previous, secondary data, onto the summary sheets. Categorization of the extracted data was then made. The strategy to analyze the case study evidence followed a theoretical proposition guiding case analysis (Yin, 2003). The theoretical orientation was based on the generally used 3R principles Reduce, Reuse and

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Recycle of environmental abatement. Collected information is analyzed under these 3R categories and is furthered identied as technical and manual. Delineating measures into CSI To achieve generalization to some degree beyond the immediate situation, cross-case syntheses were also performed for these studied hotels which represent three out of four certied ISO 14001 hotels in the city (Doyle, 2003; Noblit and Hare, 1998). The same environmental measures that were identied in these three cases were interpreted as common core (C) measures. Environmental measures that were ascertained in two cases were regarded as signicant (S). Environmental measures that were found in one case are termed individual (I) measures. Then the research further analyzed these measures by delineating them into three types - manual basis (undertaken by operating staff), technical skills (undertaken by engineering employees), and higher investment. Quantitative analysis The other unit of analysis embedded in these cases involved the search for reported energy consumption data and energy-related variables to evaluate the overall effectiveness of various categories of measures. To perform relevant analysis, the study collected two sorts of data inhouse activities and climatic parameters. Structured data collection sheets were designed and were distributed twice before certication and another after certication to owner, general managers or chief engineers to collect relevant inhouse activities and physical information. For the climatic data, the researcher purchased them from the local observatory. The collected gures were then input into four sorts of estimation techniques: energy consumption per occupied room, gas usage per food cover, normalized performance indicator, and multiple regression: (1) Energy usage per occupied room. The rst technique has been used by hotel operators, since an occupied room has been recognized as a sound basis for managerial analysis. The three studied hotels adopted this analytical approach in preparation of their environmental reports. However, past and recent studies indicated that climatic variable is the dominant factor in affecting energy performance in most situations, rather than the consumption activity room occupancy (Redlin and de Roos, 1980; Zmeureanu, 1994; Chan, 2005). Thus, there is a practical need to incorporate climate-related factor into any future analysis of hotel energy consumption. Nevertheless, the activity variable number of occupied room appears to be more suitable to explain water consumption as the correlation between water usage and climatic factor is not strong, especially when the laundry function of the hotel is outsourced, the number of occupied room would be a more suitable variable to explain water consumption. (2) Gas usage per food cover. The selection of the second technique is due to the fact that gas was mainly used in the studied hotels Chinese kitchens and food cover was commonly recognized as the key variable. This is suitable for a hotel whose gas is solely used for cooking. However, in many situations, gas would also be used for heating the hot water system or boiler. The hybrid use of gas will distort the measurement of gas usage per food cover.

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(3) Normalized performance indicator (NPI). The third technique refers to the annual electricity consumption based on a hotels gross oor area. It has prevailed in the building profession. A number of building energy specialists has used it to analyze the electricity consumption in hotels (Chan and Lam, 2002). Yu and Chows study found that 28 per cent of surveyed commercial building designers used this method either to estimate the size of air-conditioning plant or to compare the result generated by simple energy estimation program (Yu and Chow, 2000). Thus, this method seems to be more suitable for the stage of hotel design, not operations. (4) Multiple regression. The forth technique is the application of the multiple regression in analyzing hotel energy saving that was raised in the 1980s. Probably due to the sophistication of this technique and the difculties of accessing PCs at that time, the use of multiple regression in this aspect has not been frequent until recently. In the early 2000s, scholars in the hotel arena adopted multiple regression technique to estimate energy and water consumption of the hotel sector and individual hotels (Chan and Mak, 2004; Deng and Burnett, 2002a, b). In this study, regression analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between dependent variables - monthly consumption of four types of energy (i.e. electricity, diesel, gas, and water) and other independent variables including the number of occupied rooms, number of guests, average out-door temperature, number of cooling degree days and food cover. The data for formulating the equations were derived from the 36-month data prior to certication. To calculate the number of the cooling degree days, the study summed up the monthly difference between daily average air temperature and the specied temperature of activating the cooling system. Stepwise multiple regression was performed (Coakes and Steed, 2001; Hair et al., 2006). As the resulting equations were based on data from the situations in pre-certication, the predicted consumption could be regarded as the consumption that happened in the pre-certied conditions. The differences between predicted consumption and the actual usage after certication can thus be interpreted as the estimated savings generated including the standard error. Three cases background Hotel Nikko Hongkong (Nikko) is a member of Nikko Hotels International, with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. The hotel continues the tradition of Japanese hospitality, which is renowned throughout the world. Opened in April 1988, Hotel Nikko Hongkong is a ve-star deluxe hotel in Hong Kong, with 462 rooms and seven outlets. The hotel is also located at Tsim Sha Tsui East and next to the Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong. Nikko is the leader of implementing EMS in the Hong Kong hotel industry. In the early 1990s, the hotel started pushing for environmental improvements by implementing energy and water conservation practices. As soon as the green practices on water and energy were on track, Nikko hotel started looking for ways to minimize waste production (Hotel Nikko Hongkong, 1999a). Nikkos EMS based on the ISO 14001 standard was eventually set up in April 1999 (Hotel Nikko Hongkong, 1999b).

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Grand Stanford is a water front ve-star hotel located in Tsimshatsui East. It has 579 rooms and four food and beverage outlets. The hotel was managed by Holiday Inn in the 1980s and by the owners management company in the 1990s. More recently, Intercontinental have taken over the management. In the mid 1990s, Grand Stanford initiated the environmental program and obtained the certication of ISO 14001 in 2000. The Kowloon Shangri-la hotel is a ve-star hotel built up in the 1980s located in Tsimshatsui area commercial area and has about 700 rooms plus seven catering outlets. In September 1996, it started the process of developing an EMS and soon became the rst hotel in Asia to obtain ISO 14001 certication. Its prompt development of EMS up to international standard is based on its existing best practice in each department. The EMS brings signicant benets reputation and competitive edge to hotel and these benets have always outweighed the cost (Tsai et al., 2003). Analysis A total of 113 measures were identied. Five groups were delineated from the data including energy, water, air, paper and chemical. It was found that 55 measures had been related to energy, chiey electricity, reducing practices. The dominance of electricity cutting measures is mainly due to the fact that electricity consumption occupies about 70 per cent of total annual energy consumption in sub-tropical city hotels (Deng and Burnett, 2000). Electricity-saving measures As shown in Figure 1, 14 core electricity reduction practices, were adopted, by these three studied hotels. Contrary to many claims that environmental works entailed high investment, only four measures were identied as higher capital investment namely, solar control window lm, sensors of air-conditioning system, key tag controlled switches and energy-saving light bulbs. It is believed that the purchase of these technologies may effectively reduce energy cost on one hand and improve environment on the other. For instance, the key tag controlled switches and air-conditioning sensors can activate and control lighting, air-conditioning and ventilation systems based on zone occupancy. Installation of both devices can achieve signicant savings and can pay back their initial costs within three years (Carbon Trust, 2007). In this study, Nikko estimated that the guestroom keycard system could save $0.3 per room per day (Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CFELIB) and Tour Operations Initiative for Sustainable Tourism Development (TOIFSTD), 2002). With an initial cost of $21 per switch, the payback period was 70 days given that a third of guest did not turn off the master electrical switch when leaving their room. For energy-saving light bulbs, it can generate less unwanted heat, resulting in 75 per cent less energy consumption (Carbon Trust, 2007). The payback period is approximately one year (UK Department of the Environment, 1999). These modern energy-saving light bulbs have an attractive appearance and good light output, and their lifespan are usually seven to eight times longer than standard light bulbs (Carbon Trust, 2007). For the solar-control window lm, it was observed that eld research about the energy saving capability was limited. On the other hand, the remaining nine measures were less expensive and easy to be undertaken by operating staff in the studied hotels. For the signicant reduction practices, there were 23 measures of which 16 measures were identied to have more

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Figure 1. Taxonomy of electricity reduction practices

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technical requirement than the core practices and the manual practice was limited to three (item no. 15-17). Each studied hotel had also unique energy reduction practice. Grand Stanford operated the boiler when percentage load was over 30 per cent. The Shangri-la closed guest oor during low occupancy and installed an auto-stop function for lift when lift was not in use. Apart from these measures, there were a number of practices, which were identied during the early part of the research but unconrmed during the latter part. This phenomenon was probably ascribed to some interviewers leaving the company or some change in their positions to other section. This makes the study difcult to contact them to verify the practices. Table II shows the assessment methods pertaining to the three types of energy consumption before and after certication originated from respective hotels. The averaging based on per occupied room, multiple regression and normalized performance indicator (NPI) are the methods generally adopted by hotel practitioners, scholars and building professionals, respectively. Assessing electricity consumption As displayed in Table II, the average usage of electricity based on per occupied room was on the increase instead of declining after the adoption of the identied measures. This was mainly due to the use of the lower explanatory power variable occupied room. In the two investigating periods, the occupancy of these three studied hotels had about 10 per cent spread in average. The lower occupancy in the post certication period thus pushed up the electricity usage per occupied room. On the other hand, multiple regression results with average R 2 over 0.9 shows positive electricity saving ranging from 314,252kWh to 2,405,635kWh in average per year for Nikko and Shangri-la. For the Grand Stanford, the reverse trend of electricity savings was due to the replacement of fuel oil red boiler by electric heat pumps, which consumed a substantial amount of electricity in post certication period. This change in the type of energy used directly affected the predictability of the regression equation, which was built on the data using diesel oil-red boiler (i.e. a situation without electric heat pump). The third method, NPI, appears to be relatively suitable for these three cases and shows a moderate reduction (5-25kWh in average) of electricity usage on per square meter basis. Measures with dual purposes It was also observed that there were 13 measures possessing dual purpose either energy or water reduction or energy and indoor air pollutant reduction as shown in Figure 2. The former includes adjustment of water ow rate and water temperature for different kitchens and various washing machines as well as installation of temperature sensor and control valve for dry cleaning machine. The later encompasses kitchen doors adjacent to dinning areas being kept closed, checking any leakage of refrigerant, adjusting air to fuel ratio, checking primary air unit (PAU) and fresh air dampers right amount of air supply, calibrating stream meters, using outdoor low temperature outdoor air for cooling and analyzing combustion efciency. Measures for gas and fuel oil reduction In the area of gas and diesel oil reduction, the core practices (item no. 59, 60) were to clean the kitchen equipment and to adjust the air to fuel ratio to optimize the diesel

Electricity Before certication 19,245,482.00 43,923,095.00 21,524,408.10 where R 2 0:923 (Nikko) (Shangri-la) (Grand Stanford) where R 0:915 where R 0:948
2 2

Regression (kWh) Postcertication 18,931,230.00 41,517,460.00 22,931,330.00 Variance (kWh) 314,252.00 2,405,635.00 2 1,406,921.90 Before certication 63.60 107.19 64.06 Postcertication 69.76 129.18 70.54 Before certication 290.91 390.43 254.19 Postcertication 281.43 364.19 248.55

Per occupied room basis (kWh)

Normalized performance indicator (kWh per m2)

Nikko Shangri-la G Stanford Equation Monthly electricity consumption 278,268 19,003AVTemp 4.6Guest Monthly electricity consumption 1,304,171 1,609CDD 19.6OCC Monthly electricity consumption 463,008 781CDD 6Cover Gas Regression (MJ) Before certication 12,836,305.00 20,730,816.00 194,995.14 Postcertication 12,639,264.00 24,132,096.00 248,921.00 197,041.32 2 3,401,280.00 2 53,925.86 where R2 0:384 where R 0:596 where R 0:748 Per occupied room basis (litres) Postcertication 944,200.00 2,011,500.00 1,316,492.00 Variance 1,109,942.00 127,331.50 2 549,530.89 Before certication 4.33 5.64 5.37 where R 2 0:608 where R 2 0:779 where R 2 0:742 Postcertication 3.53 6.26 4.05
2 2

Variance

Per occupied room basis (MJ) Before Postcertication certication 44.62 46.54 54.21 75.11 0.80 0.77

Gas usage per food cover basis (MJ per cover) (MJ per cover) Before Postcertication certication 7.86 9.37 15.19 18.76 c 0.31 0.26 (Nikko) (Shangri-la) (Grand Stanford) Normalized performance indicator (litres per m2) Before Postcertication certication 19.79 14.04 20.55 17.64 21.3 14.27 (Nikko) (Shangri-la) (Grand Stanford)

Nikko Shangri-la G Stanford Equation Monthly gas consumption 489,401.4 2,345.7AVTemp 1.8Cover Monthly gas consumption 665,581.5 2 9,252AVTemp 7.8Cover Monthly gas consumption 1,625.7 0.24Cover Diesel oil Regression (litres) Before certication 2,054,142.00 2,138,831.00 766,961.11

Nikko Shangri-la G Stanford Equation Monthly diesel oil consumption 92,203.1 2 1,413.7AVTemp 0.48Cover Monthly diesel oil consumption 127,217.4 2 2,617.3AVTemp 1.8OCC Monthly diesel oil consumption 43,313.1 2 1,184.3AVTemp 0.5Cover

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Table II. Assessment of performance of energy-saving measures

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Figure 2. Taxonomy of reduction practices for dual purposes

boiler performance. Other signicant reduction practices (item no. 61-63) for the boiler include the routine checking, applying chemical treatment of feed water and installing economizer to recover water heat. All these measures required some technical knowledge. Again, these measures are also seldom available in many manual checklists. Assessing gas usage For the gas consumption shown in Table II, the explanatory power of the equations was also weak ranging from 0.38 to 0.74. This phenomenon is most probably due to the various ways of Chinese cooking methods, which may entail quite a different duration of stewing and steaming for menu items in the Chinese restaurants. On the other hand, the ratio of gas consumption to food cover indicates an increasing trend of gas usage ratio by 19-24 per cent in the two study periods. Such a rise in the value of gas usage ratio perhaps attributable to the change in menu item, chef cooking practice, the obsolete of cooking equipment and even change in gas pressure or caloric value. Thus, it is suggested to carry out a mechanical check into cooking equipment. Also to remedy the monitoring mechanism in this aspect, sub-metering for gas usage and recording the number of food cover in various sections of Chinese kitchen can also be considered. If resources available, it is worthy to measure and calculate the gas consumption of individual dish for reference. Since this investigation involves only three cases, it is necessary to enlarge the number of investigating hotels before we come to the conclusion about the increasing trend. Assessing fuel oil usage For the diesel oil consumption revealed in Table II, the explanatory power of three hotels regression equations was moderately acceptable ranging from 0.61 to 0.78. Almost all three indicators show the reduction of diesel oil consumption in post certication period when compared with pre certication period. The only exception was found in the per occupied room method for Shangri-la. Measures dealing with air pollutants In terms of reducing the amount of air pollutants, three studied hotels have established non-smoking guest oor, phased out unhealthy air pollutants R-23 and used environmental friendly re extinguisher as core measures as revealed in Figure 3. Other signicant practices include replacement of existing drying equipment with an approved model, the set up of non-smoking section of staff cafeteria and the improvement of buildings internal air balance. Water-saving measures and consumption assessment For water savings as displayed in Table III, the core practices comprised installing ow regulator, keeping kitchen always clean and turning on water taps when needed. Additional measures undertaken by Shangri-la and Grand Stanford were the installation of calibrate-able water control system and ow meters. After certication, water consumed per occupied room in Nikko was the lowest among the three local hotels. It recorded a consumption rate of 0.94m3 per occupied room, which approximated the industry average of 0.95m3 in the US according to a survey conducted by the American Hotel and Lodging Association (Brodsky, 2005).

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Figure 3. Taxonomy of air pollutant reduction practices

Shangri-La and Grand Stanford recorded a consumption rate of 1.19m3 and 1.18m3 respectively. Both gures were higher than the US industry average. In terms of effectiveness of these measures, the study found that the regression based evaluation method was not applicable as the resulting R-square of equation was very weak ranging from 0.13 to 0.44. The low explanatory power of the regression equations is probably due to the distortion of the historical data pattern as a result of the installation of many water saving devices during the eve of certication. However, it can be seen from Table III that all hotels water consumption experienced remarkable drop under the remaining two evaluation method NPI and per occupied room. The magnitude of decrease in water consumption ranged from 18 to 43 per cent. In

Water consumption 0.94 1.19 1.18

Water consumption After Before certication certication (m3) (m3) 5.19 5.57 6.95 (Nikko) (Shangri-la) Stanford)

Water consumption on per occupied room basis Before After certication certication (m3) (m3)

Water consumption on per NPI basis Before After certication certication (m3 per m2) (m3 per m2) 3.75 3.3 4.15

Nikko 126,038 1.14 Shangrila 35,676 190,337 1.58 G Stanford 19,769 191,511 1.75 Equation where R2 Monthly water consumption 7,293.9 0.034 0:362 Cover 0.27Linen 0.26Guest where R2 Monthly water 0:155 consumption 15,073 0.336Rm Nite 0.293Cover Monthly water consumption 7,451 0.023Cover 0.016Linen 0.62Guest where R 2 0:462 (Grand

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Table III. Assessment of performance of water-saving measures

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accordance with NPI, Grand Stanford records the largest reduction in water, followed by Shangri-la and then by Nikko. The NPI method appears to be more suitable when only total water is available. By benchmarking comparison of the resultant water norm on per occupied room, Nikko outperformed the other two. But the situation is reversed when NPI is adopted. Owing to its denition, the per occupied room method is particularly suitable to hotels that install sub-meter to record water consumption merely for room. To better understand the effectiveness of water saving in various departments in future, it is suggested that hotel should not just install sub-meter in various areas, but also calculate water consumption average based on respective water consumption and activities. Measures for solid waste management For reducing the amount of paper, all three studied hotels used the paper of both sides, electronic mail and eliminate meal coupon. Other signicant measures included the purchase of biodegradable tissue paper and linen coaster. To reduce the chemical usage, all three hotels purchased environmental-friendly cleaning chemicals, selected suitable detergent and placed towel reuse sign in guest room. Non-smoking guest oors were established and more environmental-friendly extinguisher plus phasing out of R-11 refrigerant for chillers were adopted in all these studied hotels. In the area related to reusing principle, there were 14 measures (item no. 79-81, 92-100 and 109-110) as shown in Figure 4. The core practices were the donation of used clothes, collection of outside publications for staff reading and encouragement of supplier to reuse containers. The other signicant reuse practices were also popular in many local hotels such as use of canvas bags for guest and staff laundry, reuse of towel/bed linen and chemical containers plus donation of mattress, soap, equipment, leftover food and so on. For the recycling principle, it was found that 13 measures have been adopted including seven cores, three signicant and three individual practices. The core recycling practices (item no. 82-88) covered newspaper, envelop, cartridge, sticker, container and encouragement of supplier to use environmental friendly packaging. Other items for recycling by two hotels were tin can, toilet paper wrapping, wooden hanger, bottle, paper wrapped chopsticks and rinse water. It was also observed that Shangri-la has some additional recycling practice for stationery, menu and newspaper distribution bag. However, during the research process, it was discovered that the record on the reuse or recycle of solid waste was not well documented. This is probably due to either the tightening resources allocated to environmental monitoring or the lessoned attention on reporting in these areas. This situation has a departure from chapter 30 of Agenda 21 adopted at the Rio Earth Summit; that chapter has further encouraged business and industry to report annually on their environmental records as well as on their use of energy and natural resources. Pryce (2001) even held that environmental factors have been crystallized into the key performance areas identied by Agenda 21. The results in the key performance areas can then be benchmarked to previous periods or against other hotels. Therefore, it is recommended that hotel operators should pay attention to the evaluation mechanism and process so as to achieve a real monitoring function. The suggested audit tables for waste management, by international and professional body,

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Figure 4. Taxonomy of reuse and recycle practices

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can be considered as a prototype for developing as monitoring tool (International Hotels Environmental Initiatives (IHEI), 1996). Conclusions and implications The study has unveiled many environmental measures being applied in deluxe hotels with ISO14001 EMS certication. These identied measures provide hoteliers a thorough picture and deeper understanding about the actual environmental works involved in this internationally recognized EMS beyond generally perceived documentary works of EMS. Hotel operators and owners can thus use these measures as a reference to either apply EMS certication or developing their own EMS. Based on this published experience, they may have more accurate estimate of the resource and time required for the development of the EMS. Especially, the core measures can be treated as indispensable parts in hotels environmental management systems ISO14001. As a result, any hotel that plans to start setting up EMS ISO14001 must concentrate on these core measures. Also in contrast to most other technical standards developed over the years by ISO, the current ISO14001 is interpreted as a process standard since it species the characteristics of the components of a management system rather than particular measure/product specications or performance requirements (Fryxell and Szeto, 2002). Nevertheless, this study synthesizes and differentiates 113 measures in these three hotels and establishes a reference database for converting the current process standard to some specied standards or measures essential in the hotel ISO 14001 EMS. On the other hand, while monitoring is considered as an important part in the EMS 14001, the study found that there was still a deciency that is the inappropriate use of energy consumption on per occupied room basis to assess energy consumption in the monitoring part. In light of this situation, the study recommends and demonstrates the use of regression analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of energy saving measures, particularly electricity. To make the assessment by regression analysis more easy-to-use in the hotel sector, the study suggests that trade association should load and update a cooling degree day database online so that member hotel may retrieve this relevant parameter to predict the energy saving potential. The trade association may even collaborate with hotel school to construct and maintain this web. On the other hand, hotelier may also partner with hotel schools to predict the energy savings attributable to these measures by using their statistical software of multiple regressions. This computer based statistical technique is very sophisticated in its earlier versions in two decades ago whereas the technique is becoming more and more user-friendly and easy-to-use in its present version. However, it should be noted there were still some difculties in tracing the reduction of energy usage that can be attributed to ISO14001 as many hotels could implement energy saving measures before they plan to achieve this certication.
References Brodsky, S. (2005), Water conservation crucial to energy savings, Hotel & Motel Management, July 18. Carbon Trust (2007), Sector Review Hospitality: Saving Energy without Compromising Service (CTV013), Carbon Trust, London.

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