Toward a responsible luxury in the hotel industry
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Authors
Ahed, Kenza
Issue Date
2015
Degree
MSc in Marketing
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
The problem: This paper investigates in the sustainable luxury strategy for the hotel industry in French Polynesia, with a particular focus on the Brando hotel. Indeed, the luxury hospitality industry has seen a growing market, named sustainable ecotourism due to an evolution of their wealthy clientele. This paper investigates in the main issues of an insular environment with regards to this strategy. In order to explore these issues, this investigation applied Jitpakdee and Thapa (2012) analysing tool of the sustainable eco tourism indicators, which considered environmental, economic and sociocultural indicators. The methodology: Required qualitative data from 7 participants whom are actors in French Polynesia tourism market, agreed to take part in the qualitative research, which subscribed to an exploratory study. The quantitative research had 51 local students as a sample size; the data collected used the survey strategy. The overall research design used cross-sectional qualitative and quantitative design. Conclusion and Recommendation: The findings were that indeed luxury and sustainability has sharing value such as time, beauty, richness, and nature. Plus, the sustainable luxury strategy start to be developed in the hospitality industry in French Polynesia, indeed the Brando hotel by using renewable energies and new technologies in Tetiaroa Private Island, an atoll near by Tahiti, joins in this approach. Thus eco innovation has an important role in the strategy, it allows managing and preserving the environment. Plus a new model is starting, as the hotel has partnerships with non- profit organisation on site, which helps through research and education to subscribe in sociocultural and environmental sustainability. Nonetheless, this strategy needs to be developed at the destination scale, as it becomes to be a standard in the field. However the insularity of French Polynesia due to it small island environment challenge the economic sustainability, plus it requires special management on site and for the stakeholders. Furthermore, this alliance meet limits, at some point the luxury international standards, has sometimes no coherence in regard to the sustainable development concept. Author Keywords: Sustainable development, hotel industry, eco innovation, tourism industry.