The European Ecolabel for tourist accommodation in Italy: An exploratory study

Among the existing voluntary initiatives that a business may implement to contribute directly and indirectly to the efficient use of natural resources and to the environmental protection, formal certification schemes concerning products or services are the ones that may guarantee a defined framework for an official recognition of the environmental commitment to continuous and sustainable improvement. The introduction of the EU Ecolabel, aimed to promote products (and, successively, also tourism services) with reduced negative environmental impacts, was intended both to propose to the market a common reference standard for the European State members and to ensure credibility of a voluntary label based on a public recognition scheme among customers and other stakeholders. The purpose of this research was to address the perception issue about the advantages driven by the award of the EU Ecolabel to tourist accommodation service and the main difficulties encountered by the applicants. After having considered the EU Ecolabel scheme participation experience of the Italian mountain hut-keepers in a previous work, the study was further expanded to all the EU Ecolabel licence-holders for tourist accommodation service, in 2013, in Italy. Also in this case, the data analysed and discussed were collected through a questionnaire designed to gather a mix of qualitative and quantitative information in January 2014.