Sustainability and hotel business: criteria for holistic, integrated and participative development

Debates regarding sustainable management have become notorious, significant and pertinent to contemporary society. This perspective is justified by the fact that modern management should address concerns of a fully aware audience regarding limits to be imposed on the use of natural/cultural resources and the negative impact of operations on the environment and on society and individuals. Undoubtedly, this assumption is even more important in industries where the power of socioenvironmental, cultural and economic transformation is increasingly latent, such as in the case of hotels. First, this article introduces a bibliometric analysis that exposes sustainable criteria verified in current management models, which allows for an identification among hotel companies for a predisposition for environmental and external social responsibility. Second, a primary contribution lies in structuring more holistic criteria, integrated in the internal/external hotel organizational background, in a manner that will enable organizations to help protect the environment as well as sociocultural, political and economic aspects of society.