An initial study on hotel low-carbon procurement management—A perspective of China mainland

As a sustainable practice, green procurement has been done by the hotel industry for about 20 years. It has huge potential for sustainable development. Green procurement has changed the traditional procurement mode and has facilitated expansion of hotel environmental management. Yet, due to that in the current green procurement management, only such factors as using, machining, and substituting process of the goods or service procured have been regarded in the case of their environmental impact, with other factors as producing, transportation, consumption and decomposition (of waste) being ignored, thus it is difficult for traditional procurement to provide suitable services to meet the multiple requirements of both economic benefit and environment protection. The problem has caused researchers to rethink the current green procurement, which leads to an increasing research attention to a new form of procurement. This paper firstly puts forward the definion of hotel low carbon procurement and describe its connotation; It then analyzes the low-carbon procurement management mode, and explores the necessity and feasibility of realizing low carbon procurement management; Lastly, it points out the main realisization approaches of low carbon procurement, including: 1) for the government to push the low-carboned policy and mechanism environment; 2) for the owners and managers of the hotels to build up low-carbon consciousness; 3) to select specialized and intensive low-carbon procuring mood; 4) to obtain technological support from related research groups; 5) to provide professional personnel guarantee. It is hoped that the adoption of low-carbon procurement will lead to the greater popularity of green hotel establishment.