Project-based approach to the implementation and performance evaluation of environmental management in the hotel and restaurant business

Abstract

Purpose. To substantiate a project-based approach to implementing an environmental management system in the hotel and restaurant business and to develop an applied model that combines environmental audit, work planning, stakeholder management, risk assessment and environmental performance indica-tors.
Methods. The study applies systems analysis, online content analysis of open web sources, compar-ative analysis, project modelling, WBS structuring, RACI logic, risk matrix and KPI analysis.
Results. The empirical basis consists of 30 open online sources: 8 corporate sustainability or re-porting pages of hotel groups operating in the European market and 22 restaurant chains represented in an open sustainability ranking. The sample is purposive; therefore, the findings are interpreted as indicators of public environmental disclosure rather than statistically representative evidence for the whole HORE-CA sector. Frequencies, percentages, ranking of indicators and the public environmental disclosure index were used for quantitative generalization.The results show that energy and climate goals, waste and plastic practices and general targets are the most visible components of public disclosure. Weaker areas include transparency of water consumption, quantitative disclosure of food waste, responsible sourcing and local-ization of responsibility at the level of individual establishments. The generalized public environmental disclosure index reached 82.5% for hotel groups and 63.6% for restaurant chains, indicating a higher insti-tutionalization of environmental management in the hotel segment. A project model of EMS implementa-tion was developed, including initiation, environmental audit, planning, implementation, monitoring, in-ternal audit and corrective actions.
Conclusions. The implementation of an EMS in HORECA should be organized as a project with clear phases, responsibilities, risks and KPIs. The proposed model enables hospitality enterprises to move from fragmented green initiatives to systematic environmental performance management and can be used in professional education related to project management in the hotel and restaurant business. The scope of generalization is limited by the purposive sample and the use of open online sources.