89 Civil Engineering Research for Industry – 2011 Department of Civil Engineering – University of Moratuwa A STUDY ON SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION PRACTICES IN SRI LANKA HOTEL SECTOR Eng Prof (Mrs) N Ratnayake, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa (Email: niranrat@uom.lk) Eng Srilal Miththapala, Project Director, Greening Sri Lanka Hotels, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, Colombo 2 (Email: srilalm@cccsolutions.org) Abstract: Tourism is becoming a very important sector in the Sri Lankan economic development, with the end of the 30 year conflict situation. It is reported that 7.9% of the GDP of Sri Lanka is contributed by the Travel and Tourism industry. At the same time, the tourism industry is one of the highest consumers of energy and natural resources and could become a cause of much environmental and social concern if proper conservation measures are not implemented to reduce the drain on the country’s resources. In order to address the above issue, a project called “Greening Sri Lankan Hotels” has been launched by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, under the EU funded SWITCH-Asia program. While the “Greening Sri Lankan Hotels” project has a target of addressing the hotels in the whole country, for the current study, a few hotels where the data was available and the potential for saving could be estimated were selected. The study showed that even in the more sustainability- conscious hotels, there is room for improving the situation by better practices as well as better choice of equipment. It was found that on average about 30% of the water consumption and 17% of electricity consumption can be reduced in the three hotels studied. The suggested interventions to achieve such savings would have relatively short payback periods, thus making them worthwhile. They would also reduce the carbon foot print by an average of about 26%. Keywords: Energy conservation, Green Hotels, Sustainable tourism, Waste reduction, Water conservation 1. Introduction With increasing awareness on global energy crisis, scarcity of natural resources and growing attention on climate change and global warming, it has become a sustainability issue for the hotel sector to implement better practices in water consumption, energy usage and waste management. Pressure for greening the Tourism industry is coming from the clientele, particularly the European market. The challenge for tourist hotels is to save water and energy and reduce waste of natural resources without compromising the comfort level provided to the guests. As determined by many studies in other countries, the hotel sector has a saving potential of at least 20% in water consumption and energy consumption by improving their resource utilization by adopting best practices. However, in Sri Lanka, except for the large scale multinational hotels, attempts for conservation among the small and medium scale hotels seems to be very limited, perhaps due to the lack of awareness about the importance of water conservation, energy conservation and waste management, and the potential for saving of money by reducing the above consumptions. Since the Sri Lanka Tourism industry is expected to develop rapidly in the next few years, it is very important that resource conservation is practiced by the hotels in order to make tourism in Sri Lanka sustainable. It is important to assess the current situation with respect to the resource consumption practices among the tourist hotels and the conservation measures that are being practiced, and the possible measures that can be introduced in order to reduce the consumption. 2. Objectives To assess the current water consumption, energy consumption and waste management practices in a cross section of hotels in Sri Lanka, identify the conservation measures that are being practiced, and the possible measures that can be introduced in order to reduce the resource consumption by at least 20%.