The state of sustainability in the hospitality industry and what the future holds Akram Abubaker HADM 3310 Th 430

Over the past decade, the hotel industry is trying to find ways to become more socially and environmentally acceptable. Hotels alone take up about 5 billion square feet of space and with over 5 million guest rooms. Along with that, they accumulate about $5 billion in energy usage. With people using it for leisure or business trips, they can help contribute to the environment. People traveling for business altogether make around 400 million business trips every year. The lodging industry can make an impact on the environment easily by seeing how much people use it. Most operations in the hotel have trouble implementing energy efficient innovations. Hotels ingest energy for HVAC operations, lighting, cooking fuel, and other miscellaneous things. Hotel can implement innovations by producing renewable energy, using hybrid or alternative fuel transportation fleet, and facility designed with sustainable materials that maximizes energy efficiency. Renewable energy is one of the implementations that is trending and they are doing it through a new program called LEED. LEED is certificate program that promotes transformation of buildings and how they are constructed, maintained, and operated. It takes a more performance-based approach to endorse the comfort of occupants through enhancing the quality their indoor environment. More and more hotels will apply to get the LEED program because it does not only help their organization become more sustainable but more profitable. It helps cut down operating cost year-by-year. Data was compared before and after certification and it was shown that it helped hotels increase their profits substantially. Karim Khalifa, senior vice president, architecture and construction for Marriott International proves