Problems with green hotels in China

In the 1990s, the world entered the "environmental protection era" and the "green era". The arrival of the green era has a huge impact on the world's economic development, and the hotel industry is no exception. People are paying more and more attention to resource and environmental protection in the process of production and consumption. Although tourist hotels are not like heavy industries that consume large amounts of energy and cause serious pollution, causing serious damage to the ecology and biology, they also bring varying degrees of implicit or explicit pollution and waste of resources to the environment. The establishment of my country's sustainable development strategy has regulated the operating behavior of my country's hotels from a policy and legal perspective, requiring hotels to achieve green marketing; the trend of international environmental protection has also had a major impact on my country's hotels, requiring hotels to follow the international environment Standard engages in marketing. Under the pressure of environmental protection at home and abroad, a small number of hotels in my country have begun to establish green marketing awareness. However, it goes without saying that most hotels in my country are far from green marketing, or even have no green marketing color at all. The implementation of green marketing in hotels in my country still has a long way to go.

1. Definition of the concept of green marketing

Green marketing is driven by green consumption. Green consumption means that consumers realize that environmental degradation has affected their quality and way of life, and require companies to produce and sell green products with minimal negative impact on the environment to reduce consumption that harms the environment. The so-called green marketing means that enterprises comply with the trend of green consumption, and from the perspective of protecting the environment, opposing pollution, and making full use of resources, they meet the green needs of consumers and achieve corporate marketing through measures such as developing products, utilizing nature, and turning waste into treasure. Target. The meaning of "green" here is multi-faceted. It can refer to products, industries or industries, or it can also be a business philosophy or a behavioral concept. The central meaning of "green" refers to protecting the earth's ecological environment, promoting the harmony between man and nature, The harmonious relationship between social economy and ecological environment ensures the sustainable development of human society and economy.

There are three purposes for implementing "green marketing": first, to save material consumption and protect earth resources; second, to ensure the safe use, hygiene and convenience of products to benefit people's physical and mental health and quality of life. Improvement; third, guide green consumption, cultivate people's green awareness, and optimize people's living environment. "Green marketing" aims to achieve people's green consumption from the environment and return green to the environment.

2. The implementation of green marketing in the hotel industry has achieved initial results

1. Many hotels have begun to form a sense of social responsibility. With the gradual promotion of marketing concepts in our country, hotels are increasingly realizing that as a member of society, hotels should assume social responsibilities. For example, on April 28, 1999, 14 hotels including Hangzhou Zhijiang Resort and Zhejiang World Trade Center Hotel jointly issued an initiative to "create green hotels and advocate green consumption", which aroused enthusiastic responses from dozens of tourist hotels in Zhejiang. , "green" suddenly became a hot topic in Hangzhou hotels. A hotel representative who was the first to respond to the "green creation" activity said: We do not hesitate to invest, we just hope to reduce waste and maximize the effectiveness of limited resources; the hotel has no intention to restrict the behavior of guests, but hopes to work together with guests to commit to environmental protection. Improvement and a clean and beautiful "green" feeling; green consumption will become the mainstream of consumption in the 21st century. Joining the ranks of green consumers is a noble behavior and meets the requirements of modern civilization.

2. Producing green products has become the purpose of some hotels. Many hotels have placed cards like this in their guest rooms, "If you don't need to change the sheets, please put the card on your pillow." Most overseas guests who stayed for more than one day did this, but mainland guests rarely did this. Well, there may be two reasons for this. One is that I forgot to put it away, and the other is that I think the sheets should be changed every day. These guests may think this way: I paid, no matter how many days I stay, the disposable items should be changed every day, and the sheets and towels must be changed every day. Are you not trying to save money by promoting "green"? A hotel manager said that green marketing may objectively save money, but this is not the main purpose. We just hope to reduce waste and make limited resources play a greater role.

Some changes are actually completely unnecessary, such as towels. Reusing them may be more hygienic than changing them once. The sheets are not dirty after sleeping for a day or two, so not changing them may be more comfortable for the guests. More importantly, it saves electricity and water, reduces the use of detergents, protects the environment, and embodies the spirit of green consumption in the consumption process. Hotels should regard guests as partners in environmental protection, and employees should promote the hotel's environmental protection plans and initiatives to guests, provide guests with green products and services, and let guests know about it, understand it, and buy it. Most foreign hotels and some domestic large hotels in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and other places have implemented green marketing and do not provide disposable toothbrushes, disposable bath gels, etc. in the guest rooms. Some hotels are also gradually promoting the use of green guest rooms. When designing and planning hotels, they consider the use of green building materials and consider whether decorative materials have environmental pollution. The guest rooms use green supplies, such as natural fiber, cotton and linen supplies, green mini refrigerators, energy-saving lamps, etc.

3. Some hotels have implemented cleaner production in accordance with environmental standards. In recent years, many hotels in my country have gradually attached importance to implementing cleaner production according to environmental standards, and some have achieved good results. For example, Hangzhou Zhijiang Resort invested heavily in replacing most of its lighting equipment with energy-saving lamps with the help of the Energy Monitoring Center of the Provincial Planning and Economic Commission, and achieved significant energy-saving effects last year. Haihua Hotel is managed by the internationally renowned Accor Hotel Management Group. Mr. Lu, the Swiss general manager, said: "A year ago, Haihua used 45 tons of water every day. I didn't believe it was so much. After inspection, it was found that there were leaks, Excessive water use and other phenomena are very serious. Through savings, such as putting a submersible in the water tank and changing the faucets used by employees to take baths to infrared controls, only 25 tons are used every day. "As long as the measures are effective, 20%-30% of energy consumption can still be reduced.

4. my country's environmental labeling has entered the implementation stage. Environmental labeling, also known as green label and ecological label, refers to the Departments, public institutions, and private groups issue certificates to relevant manufacturers based on certain environmental standards to prove that the production, use, and disposal processes of their products all comply with environmental requirements, are harmless or minimally harmful to the environment, and are conducive to the regeneration and regeneration of resources. Recycling. The most successfully used ecological labels in the world are Germany's "Blue Angel" and Japan's "Eco-Mark". In March 1993, my country began to implement the environmental labeling program. p>

As planned, by April 1996, environmental labeling certification work had been carried out in 8 categories of products, and 35 products of 21 companies had obtained Chinese environmental labels. As environmental labeling products entered thousands of households, the environment The influence of logo products in marketing is increasing day by day. 5. Green marketing technology has become the choice of more and more hotels in my country. Consciously or unconsciously, green marketing techniques are used to carry out marketing activities. For example, some hotels open green food stores in their stores; use environmentally friendly substances to replace environmentally polluting substances to produce green packaging; in pricing, profit-sharing and conscientious pricing are adopted. The price strategy has become the choice of many hotels. The above situations reflect the certain development of green hotel marketing technology in our country.

3. Problems in green hotel marketing

Although green marketing of hotels in my country has made a good start, overall, there is still no green marketing awareness. Traditional, non-sustainable sales concepts and marketing methods still dominate these hotels, thus affecting the green marketing of hotels in my country. The progress of greening has had a negative impact on the effective implementation of my country's economic sustainable development strategy. The main problems in the greening of hotel marketing in my country are:

1. The hotel marketing goal is still to stimulate consumption. The stage of pursuing increased consumption quantity. One of the watersheds between green marketing and traditional marketing is the attitude towards consumption. Green marketing pursues a sustainable consumption model to improve consumption quality to reduce consumption quantity, while traditional marketing stimulates consumption and encourages more consumption. Large quantity. At present, the focus of most hotels in our country in marketing is to stimulate or motivate consumers to consume more products.

In recent years, the number of tourist hotels has grown too fast, which has not only caused a waste of capital, but also prevented the rational allocation of resources. There is a general surplus of hotels in our country, especially high-end hotels, and the room occupancy rate is not high during the off-season. This has led to vicious price-cutting competition among hotels and a decline in hotel service quality. This is contrary to the concept of green marketing.

2. Resource conservation has not yet become a marketing principle for businesses of all types. Resource protection is one of the principles of green marketing, but many hotels in our country have not established a correct concept of resources. A hotel with 300 guest rooms consumes more than 3,000 tons of standard coal per year, and energy costs account for a large proportion of the hotel's costs. According to the energy utilization rate monitoring results of several typical hotels in the province by the Zhejiang Provincial Energy Monitoring Center, the energy utilization rates of most hotels have not reached advanced levels. This is mainly reflected in the following aspects: the equipment is not in an economical operating state; the equipment control system is imperfect, causing the equipment to operate ineffectively; the equipment operation efficiency is low and cannot operate at full load; energy-saving lamps are not used where energy-saving lamps can be used, etc.

3. Green products have yet to become the go-to product for restaurants. In many countries, green products have become the best-selling products and the first choice of consumers. However, this is far from the case in our country. Some restaurants even pursue polluting products in order to obtain small profits. For example, although the Shanghai Municipal Government has repeatedly asked the catering industry to cancel foam lunch boxes and switch to lunch boxes made of degradable materials, it is difficult to implement it simply because the cost of lunch boxes made of degradable materials is slightly higher than that of foam lunch boxes.

4． The environmental labeling system has not attracted the attention of most hotels. Currently, some developed countries have generally implemented environmental labeling systems. In the context of economic globalization, environmental labeling has become the green key to open the international market. As more and more countries implement environmental labeling systems and more and more products are included in the scope of environmental labeling, the impact on my country's export products will continue to increase, and its impact and consequences will greatly exceed the anti-dumping bill. Environmental labeling has been implemented in my country since 1994. However, due to the large domestic market and the lack of strong consumer demand for environmental labeling products, most hotels have little interest in obtaining environmental labels.

5． Green thinking has not yet been introduced in hotel marketing methods. Since many hotels in my country have not yet established environmental awareness, their marketing methods are still limited to traditional methods. For example, some restaurants are not interested in public welfare undertakings, but they can spend a lot of money in pursuit of "star effect"; some restaurants use low-level and vulgar things to attract customers, causing mental pollution; in market competition, quality does not win. Instead, they compete to attract customers with "discounts", "lotteries", "high rebates to taxi drivers" and other means, and even use means to belittle their opponents; in terms of product packaging and decoration, they strive for bigness, refinement and luxury. It not only increases the cost of the product, increases the burden on consumers, but also consumes a lot of packaging materials, resulting in a lot of waste of resources; in terms of product pricing, it either kills customers at a "big price" and makes huge profits, or competes at a lower price. Seriously harm competitors and disrupt market order. All of these are incompatible with the requirements of green marketing.

6. The concept of environmental cost has not yet been accepted by the vast majority of hotels. The key to environmental protection is to prevent in advance and prevent and control pollution in the entire product process. However, because our country's current environmental protection is still in the "pollution first, then treatment" stage and lacks full-process management measures, most hotels have failed to establish the concept of environmental protection and fail to accept the environmental costs that are crucial to cleaner production. concept, the result of which is the externalization of environmental costs.

4. Tasks and countermeasures faced by hotels when implementing green marketing

1. Save material consumption and protect earth resources. The process of saving material consumption is also a process of strengthening waste processing and control. To prevent the generation of waste, we can consider it from five aspects: (1) Minimize and avoid the generation of waste. Two points are emphasized here. First, we should attach great importance to the maintenance and repair of equipment and facilities and extend the equipment replacement cycle; second, the purchase of items should be scientifically counted to avoid waste.

(2) Pay attention to the recycling of reusable items. For example, the paper should be used on both sides, or the printing paper should be used again as scratch paper, etc. (3) Recycle and recycle items that cannot be reused, such as waste paper, plastics, aluminum products, etc. Some foreign hotels also recycle leftover soap heads and sell them to manufacturers. Recycling reduces waste that cannot be reused. (4) Make full use of fuel and promote recycling. (5) Carefully examine which items in the current hotel's business content and service methods have not substantially improved the living environment and service quality, but are not conducive to saving resources and protecting the environment.

Save energy. In addition to educating employees to develop good habits of saving water and electricity and formulating incentives, it is more important to use advanced energy-saving equipment as much as possible and install energy-saving lighting devices, water-saving equipment, and energy control facilities, such as energy-saving lamps and sensor water heaters. Valves, energy limiting systems, etc. The energy-saving potential of hotels is considerable. As long as management is strengthened, operational skills are improved, and some energy-saving equipment is adopted, it is entirely possible for hotels to reduce energy consumption by 15%-25%.

2. Ensure the safe use, hygiene and convenience of products to benefit people's physical and mental health and improve their quality of life. Open "green guest rooms". "Green guest rooms" refer to guest rooms that pay attention to environmental protection. Of course, the items in the guest room should try to contain "green" factors. For example, it is best to use natural cotton or linen fabrics for bed sheets and towels; pure vegetable oil soap should be used for soap; in addition, the guest room should be equipped with One or two pots of plants make the guest room lively and springy. At the same time, we guide guests to become resource savers and environmental protectors.

Establish a "green restaurant". This refers to two aspects: First, the use of "green" vegetables. Meat and other green foods, that is, pollution-free, safe, high-quality vegetables and foods. In order to ensure the supply of "green" vegetables and meat, we should learn from the practices of McDonald's and KFC and set up special production bases. Several restaurants in a region can jointly develop them; second, we should not eat rare wild animals and plants, beneficial birds and animals. For traditional dishes that are famous for rare animals and plants, their substitutes should be researched.

Provide green services. The so-called green service refers to the service provided by the hotel with the purpose of protecting natural resources, human ecological environment and human health, and can meet the requirements of green consumers.

Strengthen environmental management and prevent pollution. In terms of protecting the environment and controlling pollution, the state stipulates that hotels must have complete sewage and exhaust gas treatment facilities, and water pollutants and exhaust gas emissions must meet national standards; the hotel's boundary noise is required to comply with environmental noise use area standards; self-provided vehicles must use lead-free Gasoline and tail gas emissions meet national standards; boilers are required to use clean fuels such as oil and gas as much as possible to reduce pollutant emissions; phosphorus-free detergents and cleaners must be used in laundry rooms and PA groups. If the above items still fail to meet the national requirements. Hotels must take effective measures to improve equipment and technology to meet standards as soon as possible. From the perspective of the development trend of reducing pollution and protecting the environment, hotel environmental management must also do the following tasks: comprehensive utilization and classified collection of solid waste, especially separate collection of waste batteries; indoor noise (especially interference) must be reduced as much as possible (noise in guest rooms) and its impact on guests; when renovating a hotel, attention should be paid to the use of materials and products with environmental protection labels. For example, the radioactive material content of some decorative stones seriously exceeds the standard, and some paints and coatings contain volatile substances that are harmful to the human body. Etc., these are all issues that need to be paid attention to in environmental management.

3. Guide green consumption, cultivate people's green awareness, and optimize people's living environment. In the minds of ordinary people, tourist hotels are places of high consumption, which are often associated with squandering and excessive pursuit of material enjoyment. Serious environmental problems are changing people's traditional ideas. The consumption model that relies on excessive consumption of natural resources, attention to ostentation, and pursuit of luxurious material enjoyment is gradually being denied. Squandering and wasting natural resources can only aggravate the deterioration of the environment and hinder the progress of human civilization.

The hotel is a higher-end consumer place. The hotel launches green guest rooms, carries out green services, provides green food, and guides guests to engage in green consumption

This is of great significance to establishing public awareness of environmental protection. .

5. Development Trend of Green Marketing in Hotels

1. Green marketing has developed into a hot spot in the new global marketing trends across the century (including information marketing, green marketing, political marketing, relationship marketing, network marketing, integrated marketing, etc.). According to economists' predictions, environmental protection issues will become an important factor affecting market supply and demand and become an important issue in marketing in the 21st century. Green marketing with the theme of environmental protection will play an increasingly prominent role in future marketing and bring many opportunities and benefits to hotels.

2. Green marketing is increasingly supported by the government and all sectors of society. Green marketing has many benefits for the government and the public, including the reduction of the government's environmental protection work burden, the implementation of government environmental protection policies and the realization of sustainable development strategic goals, and the improvement of the quality of the public's living environment and quality of life, etc. wait.

3. Green marketing is not only a matter in the operational field of hotel marketing, it has gradually been mentioned as a strategic aspect of the hotel's long-term development. For most hotels that implement green marketing, green marketing is part of their hotel's specific development strategy. The hotel regards green marketing as a new opportunity to expand the market, attract consumers, defeat competitors, and seek long-term development of the hotel. develop. In addition, all aspects of the hotel are involved in green marketing. In other words, green marketing is the "overall green action" of the hotel as a whole, including the hotel concept, hotel production, finance and other departments, as well as the hotel organization settings, all of which are designed to coordinate with green marketing. adjustment. At the same time, the implementation of green marketing also has a counterproductive effect on these aspects. For example, it improves the hotel's image, helps the hotel's financing, helps the hotel absorb outstanding talents, etc.

4． The interaction between green marketing and consumers is enhanced. Green marketing cannot be successful by working alone, it also relies on interaction with consumers. First of all, green marketing must be based on the premise that consumers' green awareness is transformed into green consumption behavior. Otherwise, green marketing can only be an empty statement. Secondly, green marketing requires high green prices due to its large amount of green investment, which also requires consumers’ understanding and acceptance. In addition, the initial green investment in green marketing is huge, and sometimes the hotel itself cannot afford it. At this time, consumers need to invest in Premium and make early investments together with the hotel. In short, on the one hand, consumers promote green marketing, and on the other hand, green marketing also promotes changes in consumer consumption patterns. The two are always in an interactive process.

5． Green marketing will face more market differentiation. This differentiation is mainly caused by the differences in green product standards in the markets of various countries and regions. In recent years, in order to achieve the purpose of environmental protection, various countries and regions have taken some unilateral actions to formulate environmental protection standards in their own favor for some important commodities and restrict imports and exports. This has caused friction in bilateral and multilateral trade. Green protection is to protect the environment through various laws to achieve natural food and green environment. Green requirements for air and water purification. At present, more than 150 multilateral environmental protection agreements have been signed internationally, nearly 20 of which contain trade clauses, aiming to achieve the purpose of implementing environmental protection regulations through trade means. Countries are also formulating increasingly complex and strict environmental protection technical standards for imported products. The environmental protection trends in various countries tend to incorporate environmental protection measures into trade rules and objectives, which undoubtedly increases the complexity and differentiation of the environment in green marketing. This will have a huge impact on the group and transnational development of hotels in our country.

6. "Green marketing" will be increasingly regulated. As a new market behavior, in the initial stage of green marketing, legislation and supervision in all aspects are not yet mature, and market order has not yet been established. Many hotels take the opportunity to use the "green" smoke screen to establish a so-called green image for themselves. However, in fact, the marketing operation itself has not been "greened".

Some countries now have various regulations on "Green Claim", including that hotels must take actual actions, otherwise they cannot promote their green image in front of the public. When promoting their green image, they must use specific examples instead of "green" or "green". “Environmentally friendly” or “ecological” refers broadly to, and so on. In addition, the implementation of green logo is also the "realization" of green marketing behavior. The green mark is a notarized identification of the "green" performance of the product, which is more convincing than the green claims implemented by the hotel. The green label not only requires the maximum elimination of pollution in the production process, but also pays attention to the impact of products on environmental protection during consumption. This is not an easy task for green marketing hotels.

7. Green barriers will increasingly replace traditional non-tariff barriers in international trade. Green barriers refer to a new form of international trade protection organizations and constitute a new trade protection network in the international market. "Green barriers" take the form of "green tariffs", also known as "environmental import surcharges", which refer to the levy of additional tariffs on some imported products that affect the ecological environment in addition to general tariffs on the grounds of protecting the environment; "green barriers" "Technical Standards", in the name of protecting the environment, developed countries formulate strict mandatory environmental protection technical standards through legislative means to restrict the import of foreign goods; "Green Quarantine", developed countries formulate strict regulations in order to achieve the purpose of restricting the import of foreign products. Stringent health and quarantine standards, especially strict requirements on pesticide residues, radioactive substance residues and heavy metal content in food. As an emerging non-tariff barrier, environmental protection measures will become increasingly favored by trade protectionists due to their high concealment, high technical requirements, flexibility and other characteristics. This also enhances the status of green marketing in international marketing and will have a profound impact on the development of my country's hotel industry in the 21st century.