07/20/2011  NGOS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS RANK LAST ON THE RESPONSIBILITY SCALE

    In a noteworthy change, survey respondents placed NGOs and international organizations last on the scale of responsibility for sustainable development issues. This observation seems to indicate that the time for enhancing awareness and encouraging action has passed and must now give way to more practical measures that enable customers to make a direct contribution.



    Cultural differences seem to influence the order in which respondents place those they see as primarily responsible for sustainable development. The government and individual citizens topped the list in France, Germany and Brazil. In these countries, respondents widely insisted on their own role in the process, with results above 70 percent overall and above 80 percent in Brazil.



    In Australia and the United Kingdom, on the other hand, hotel guests attribute almost equal responsibility to business and government, and only one out of two respondents believes that individual citizens are responsible for sustainable development. In China, the top spot went to government, followed by private enterprise.



    A constraint turned into a desirable experience. Fifty-one percent of the survey respondents said they wanted their room to be at the right temperature as soon as they arrived. Paradoxically, 93 percent said they were in favor of adjusting the air-conditioning themselves, even if it meant waiting several minutes for the desired temperature to be reached. It seems that guests are willing to sacrifice some of their own comfort in favor of the environment, as long as they have a choice and are allowed to play an active role in the process.



    Guests also say that they are increasingly considering social and environmental responsibility criteria when selecting a hotel, even if it means staying in a less practical location or paying slightly more. Lastly, sustainable development is no longer seen as a sacrifice or equated with a lower-quality offering; 66 percent of respondents do not expect comfort to suffer in a hotel engaged in a sustainable development process.



    While some of these findings need to be interpreted with caution, they nonetheless reflect a new awareness of sustainable development issues and, more importantly, the emergence of new behaviors,comments Sophie Flak,     Executive Vice President, Organization and Sustainable Development.As a leading hotel operator, its our job to deploy innovative solutions that minimize the impact of each stay no matter how responsibly our guests behave, while offering them the opportunity to play an active role if they wish. We believe that sustainable development will drive continuous improvement across the board by creating offers and practices that are efficient, safe and environmentally friendly. Our goal is reinvent hotels sustainably.



    To contribute to the development of the Earth Guest Research open knowledge platform, Accor will soon share its environmental footprint with its peers. A first in the hotel industry, the assessment included all of Accor's 4,200 hotels worldwide and confirmed the Group's commitment to establishing reliable, demanding systems of comparison to drive progress across the industry.