Proposal for the implementation of pro-environmental behaviours in the form of open eco-innovations : a perspective of consumers of hotel services

The role of eco-innovations in the contemporary hotel business is not only a marketing façade aiming at attracting the attention of a potential guest with a high environmental awareness, but more and more often it becomes a form of the operationalisation of environmental objectives inscribed in hotels’ strategies. However, these objectives cannot exist only in the minds of hotel employees and managers, but should be communicated to all stakeholders, including hotel guests. Looking at the problem of environmental degradation more broadly, it is worth noting that the need to reverse the anti-ecological tendencies of world economies is becoming not so much a regional challenge as a global one. Thus, pro-ecological solutions implemented in individual hotels and even hotel chains cannot remain the exclusive domain of such establishments, but should be popularised, or at least easily accessible to other hotel chains, which, in this respect, function as coopetitors with the same goal in mind rather than competitors. The cognitive aim of this study is to identify the characteristic features of ecological awareness and to propose recommendations for pro-ecological behaviours in the form of open eco-innovations. The achievement of this objective required the execution of a research project involving 1351 hotel guests. The research was carried out using a questionnaire method in Poland’s largest cities during the holiday months of 2021. The general willingness to incur additional financial burdens related to pro-ecological measures is declared by slightly more than one third of respondents. The vast majority of hotel guests choose to accept a variety of pro-ecological measures and restrictions.