Overview
Sustainability is an abstract concept that is not easy to convey especially during the online booking process where other information such as location, price, guest ratings and other cues dominate consumer decisions. Cues, such as ratings, are easy-to-understand information but sustainability is complex and not understood by a significant portion of consumers. Since consumers are increasingly booking through online platforms, it is rather important to create effective ways to communicate sustainability and at places where consumers are actually booking. In Switzerland today, almost 30% of all hotel bookings are made online on different platforms such booking.com and others (Schegg, 2018). Given that existing ratings on similar online platforms summarize the satisfaction of guests and make them visible at a glance, consumers have come to rely on them during booking decisions. Therefore, sustainability ratings that take into account the environmental and or social dimension of sustainability could potentially better inform consumers in a simple way about sustainability. This might help the growth of "responsible" tourism consumption that may indirectly also motivate more hotels to implement sustainable business management practices.
