Sustainable Distribution and Transportation Operations
The calculation of hotels’ carbon footprints raises the profile of the effects of distribution and transportation on customers’ sustainability assessments. Although customers themselves invoke a large carbon footprint as they travel to the location of the service firm, they are nevertheless using a hotel’s carbon footprint as one screening criterion (e.g., see
Sustainable Business.com 2013). The automation and digitization of many tourism services (e.g., virtual tours of destination attractions, online travel agents, e-conferencing) can decrease the environmental and social burdens of transportation for certain locations. As with other sustainable services, the success of electronic service distribution depends on the customers’ willingness and capabilities toadopt such approaches. Hence, firms should invest resources to encourage such adoption (e.g., price discounts for e-meetings).