Managing Sustainable Business
There are two main perspectives in relation to the management of a sustainable
tourism business:
- the need for an equilibrium between the elements that characterize the
sustainability strategies of a business. - the need to establish a strategic relationship with the tourist/guest, who is the
principle player (among the stakeholders involved in the management of
sustainable tourism) involved in sustainability initiatives.
In order to ensure a holistic and integrated management, it may be useful to
identify different types of socio-environmental impacts, and then to establish the
appropriate tools to regulate and manage them. In the analysis, we consider an SME
operating in one or more of the following sub-sectors: accommodation (B&Bs,
hotels, holiday residences, camping sites, holiday villages), bathhouses, restaurants
and catering services, cafés and pubs, bars etc. Two types of socio-environmental
impacts can be identified.
1) Direct impacts: under the direct managerial control of the organization.
2) Indirect impacts: those over which the organization has no managerial control,
as they are not directly linked to the business activities.
The direct impacts include both environmental and social aspects. The direct
environmental impacts include the consumption of natural resources (such as
energy from non-renewable resources, freshwater), the production of unsorted
waste, emissions into the atmosphere (deriving, for instance, from thermal
household appliances), sound pollution, noise, odors etc. An additional category is
the impacts linked to the selection of suppliers