SUSTAINABLE BENCHMARKS FOR TOURIST ACCOMMODATIONS IN BALI

Abstract

As part of our efforts to move towards sustainable development, it is very important
to encourage the tourism industry to be more environmentally conscious because it
consumes large amounts of resources. One way of achieving greater sensitivity is to identify
benchmarks for energy and water use and for other aspects of hotel operations like the
amount of solid waste generated. Benchmarks can be defined using data from existing
hotels. The research project focused on tourist accommodation on Southern Part of Bali
Island. It conducted a survey by mailed questionnaire of about 50% of the hotels on the
island. The questionnaire obtained annual data on several sustainability criteria that are
energy and water consumption, biodiversity conservation, resource conservation, cleaning
chemical use, solid waste management and wastewater management. The data were used
to derive baseline and best practice thresholds to improve the performance of tourist
accommodation on Bali Island.
The benchmarks, both baseline and best practice standards were developed mainly
using the study results which established the average and the average of the top 25% of
performers. The average of the top 10% of performers was also considered in selecting the
best practice standard for indicators that required stricter standards. Within the
benchmarking process, Green Globe 21 standards and some other studies were also being
used for comparison purpose.
In this survey, the difficulties were found in obtaining complete set of data from each
respondents as well as gaining sufficient responses. Few hotels provided complete set of
data. Data on energy and water consumption is the easiest to obtain, while data for other
indicators only provided by less than 75% of respondents. Most of the survey results
showed reasonable value compared to Green Globe 21 standards. Good performance of
tourist accommodation in the survey was found in energy consumption indicator that the
average and the average of the top 25% of performers were far stricter than the Green Globe
21 standards. The study concluded with benchmarks recommendation for each indicator
that can be applied to tourist accommodations in Southern Part of Bali Island.