Managerial attitudes towards environmental management among small and medium hotels in Kuala Lumpur

Empirical work on the acceptance of environmental impacts and responsibilities by hotels in developing countries is still relatively rare. There is also little work on understanding the relationship between business and environment among small and medium hotel companies. This research helps fill the knowledge gap by providing information on the responsiveness of small and medium hotels towards environmental management within the context of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, It explores the awareness and attitudes of small and medium hotel managers towards environmental management and their opinion on how things can be improved. Questionnaires containing Likert scale questions, supplemented by open-ended questions, were personally administered to willing participants. The findings indicate that respondents generally tend to provide positive response to the Likert scale questions, but refused or were unable to give clear answers to the open-ended questions which were designed to explore further the answers they provided. In practice, managers also did not go beyond the basic common sense of cutting their water and energy costs. These indicate a lack of clear and adequate knowledge about environmental management, and their tendency to be “politically correct” in relation to environmental issues. The paper ends with recommendations on how to improve the environmental management knowledge and know-how among managers of small and medium hotels.