Selection of non-financial sustainability indicators as key elements for multi-criteria analysis of hotel chains

Abstract

Nowadays, online information provided by corporate websites has a great impact on the hotel industry performance. According to existing studies, it is very likely that customers' and investors' decisions may change after consulting these portals. The environmental commitment of hotel companies is usually demonstrated to stakeholders by obtaining environmental quality certifications and eco-labels issued by specialised entities in compliance with certain requirements. However, the question of how to use the sustainable indicators that are usually scattered on the web or in company reports is a problemthat requires further research. The main objective of this study is to develop a robust and reliable model to assess the sustainability of hotel chains based on the information gathered from their websites and corporate reports. A literature review is carried out and specialists are consulted to determine the critical factors that affect hotel sustainability. Once the criteria based on nonfinancial indicators have been chosen, they are organised in a hierarchy according to their orientation. To achieve the objective of the study, a hybrid model is proposed that includes two multi-criteria decision-making approaches, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)method. AHP is used to weight the criteria, and the ranking of the alternatives is provided through TOPSIS. Subsequently, a sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the critical indicators. Finally, a numerical example is carried out with a case study of the largest Spanish hotel chains to illustrate the function and applicability of the proposed method. With the results obtained, it has been possible to establish a ranking or selection of hotel chains for the case study, since the hybrid AHP-TOPSIS method provides reliable and robust results for any qualitative or quantitative evaluation criterion, which is of great interest for the different actors involved.