Climate Change Disclosures by Hotels in the Global South

Abstract

The tourism industry contributes significantly to carbon emissions and ultimately global warming. As tourism demand starts to increase in the post-COVID-19 era, carbon emissions by the hospitality sector are also set to continue increasing. This calls for the need to focus on mitigation strategies in the hospitality sector as climate change is now regarded as an imminent crisis. There is, however, a dearth of literature on climate change disclosures by hotels in general. This study, therefore examines the state of carbon disclosures by Global South hotels, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. A desktop review of literature sources ranging from peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters and reports was utilized in this study The results of the study provide a preliminary presentation on the state of climate change reporting by hotels and contribute to the growing sustainability reporting discourse in the hotel sector of the Global South which is seen as largely voluntary and in its infancy. The findings generally reveal that carbon disclosures are minimally practised by hotels in the Global South as compared to the Global North environments.

Keywords

• climate change
• carbon disclosures
• climate change reporting
• integrated reporting
• hospitality sector