Sustainability Challenges and Opportunities in Hospitality Marketing: A Regulatory and Consumer Perspective

Voluntary corporate sustainability commitments, reporting and marketing endeavours are often falling short of credible improvements and generate ‘greenwashing’ activities. In order to address this and to credibly drive the topic of sustainability in business forward, the European Union is deploying various directives, specifically the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the EU Green Claims Directive. These directives aim to produce substantial changes in the way the industry reports ESG performance, thus limiting the room for false claims. These newly established regulations impact mostly operators and owners of hotels, but consumer choices play a crucial role in sustainability transformation as well. This article, therefore, expands on what hotel marketers need to understand about the changing EU regulatory landscape as well as the concept of consumer choice and more specifically on ‘green nudging’. Supported with hands-on examples and industry practices, the article argues that both consumers and (policy) leaders in the hospitality industry have a decisive role to play in shaping the sustainability transformation.