Fostering Sustainability In Hospitality Education -The Academia Perspective | Savita Sharma & Sidharth Srivastava

The hospitality sector historically has environmental impact through energy and water consumption, use of consumable and durable goods and solids and other hazardous waste creation. There is much more focus on sustainability in hospitality industry than past several decades. Sustainability has become utmost important for hospitality industry as triple bottom line demands the focus on environmental, economic and social impacts. As hoteliers begin to realize that they can provide an enhanced guest experience by integrating natural elements, there has been an evolution in “green thought”. To reduce the gap between the industry-academia towards sustainability, it has become a debatable topic for educationists and industry practitioners to think about various possibilities to modify the course curriculum to incorporate sustainability into the undergraduate level hospitality course curriculum. Deale et al., (2009) have revealed that sustainability as subject is rarely taught within the curriculum. This paper identifies the need to add sustainability as a subject in the curriculum for hospitality education. The difficulties and challenges of integrating sustainability into the curriculum are also discussed. The present study appraised the importance of sustainability education in hospitality curriculum by understanding thoughts of 16 Deans/ Head of Hospitality Institutions through an in-depth interview in India. The findings of this paper reveal that curriculum should be modified to incorporate sustainability as a subject for hospitality courses which helps the students think responsibly towards environment and sustainable development of hotels.