7 Chapter Seven: Hotels willingness to acquire solar energy
7.6 DTCM data collection and interview analysis
The assessment of the opinion of the hotels on the proposed incentives provided their most favorable incentives, along with alternative incentive recommendations. These incentives will constitute part of the value proposition in the development of the sustainable energy business model (SEBM).
In order to evaluate the validity of these incentives, two interviews are conducted with DTCM’s senior managers. The first interview with a Director position was conducted in the early stages of the research (see Table 32) and was of an informal nature where the main purpose was to familiarize and understand the role of DTCM in the greening of the tourism sector. The second interview was with a senior manager where a summary of the incentives was communicated and the interviewee opinion on each of the incentives was acquired.
10
23
8
22
6
17
5
17
2
7
5
14
6
14
6
11
10
20
6
20
1
1
3
9
7
10
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Disagreed
Agreed
Conditionally agreed
Alternative incentives
WTP with incentives WTP without incentives Green star Classification Marketing & Advertising support Green Certification Program
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Table 32 Summary of interviews with DTCM
Position in DTCM Type of interview Referred to as Date of interview
Director Informal DTCM1 January 10th 2012
Senior manager Semi structured DTCM2 September 29th
2015
The interview was analyzed and its main points are summarized as follows:
DTCM’s sustainability initiatives: Green Tourism Award
DTCM’s main aim is to strengthen the economy of Dubai through spreading environmental awareness and deploying initiatives that show the importance of sustainable tourism and to help hotels position themselves as environment-friendly properties to their guests.
Part of DTCM’s activities is to conduct training workshops with hotels to share best environmental practices and with experts on the field and link those with the government entities to encourage knowledge transfer (DTCM1). Despite DTCM’s efforts towards greening the tourism image of Dubai through for example the Green Tourism Award, the Award is not attracting as many hotels as it was wished for as only 100 out of the 700 hotels participate. The Award did not result in the expected effectiveness because it did not build the required capacity of the industry (DTCM2).
The participating hotels are mainly 5-star hotels and this could be due to DTCM’s eligibility criteria which are typical for 5-star hotels but not easy to be met by lower rated hotels. These criteria are: Hotels should have an environmental strategy, a CO2 emission programme (able to calculate their carbon foot print), electricity and water consumption baseline of 2 years, waste management solutions, transportation methods i.e. fuel/ diesel consumption and continues training of their staff on hotel environmental agenda and raising awareness.
DTCM sustainability strategy
Except for the Green Tourism Award, DTCM has currently no incentive scheme to encourage sustainability. However, DTCM is in the process of putting together a sustainability strategy for tourism with a committee that includes stakeholders such as DEWA, Emirates World Wide Society- World Wide Fund (EWWS-WWF) and the Emirates Environmental Group (EEG) (DTCM1).
The goal of this sustainability strategy is to develop a toolkit that could include a carbon calculator, an ESCO for retrofitting buildings as well as waste management (with the help of EEG) (DTCM2). DTCM is also currently studying the idea of developing a climate change department to drive their sustainability programs.
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Regarding their role in promoting solar energy in the hotel sector in Dubai, DTCM is not specifically advocating for solar energy but they are informing hotels about the solar introduction to Dubai’s energy mix. “We are educating them (the hotels) about DEWA’s solar programme with the “did you know” kind of approach” (DTCM2).
Opinion on proposed incentives:
As for their opinion on the proposed incentives, in principle, DTCM has indicated a general agreement to the proposed incentives, in particular the Green Star Classification.
Green Certification Programme: Although DTCM thinks green certification is a good idea, it still needs a benchmarking activity to assess what the benefits are. The fact that it was not favoured by the hotels did not come as a surprise to DTCM as they found it quite comparable to the Green Tourism Award and it needs more assessment and clear outlining of its benefits.
Marketing and Advertising Support: DTCM also showed agreement to the marketing support ideas proposed as part of the incentives. The interview suggested two ways to provide marketing support to the participating hotels: Advertising the hotels at the DTCM webpage and through DTCM participations in tourism exhibitions. DTCM was positive that an easy and inexpensive way to start could be by adding a webpage on DTCMs websites to promote those hotels acquiring solar energy but the impact of having this webpage still needs to be assessed. Another marketing channel DTCM agreed to offer is through their space in international and world renowned exhibitions where they have big space. DTCM could offer the hotels to join them.
Green Star Classification: DTCM is already considering a green star scheme and they anticipated that the hotels would find it interesting. The fact that most of the hotels interviews showed agreement to the green star raised DTCM’s interest and they suggested organizing a consultation round with the hotels.
Opinion on alternative incentives recommended by hotels
(DTCM2) interviewee commented on only three of the incentives that he thought are directly or partially under the control of DTCM. These are: DTCM exclusively booking the conference rooms and ballrooms of the hotels for their business events, offering the hotels a VIP/fast track service and the waiving of licensing fees.
DTCM agreed that holding their future events at the hotels’ facilities and offering VIP/fast track service, could be a feasible idea. (DTCM2). In terms of waiving fees, DTCM clarified that licensing fees and services have been moved recently to Dubai Economic Department, however the hotel classification activities continue to be
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recorded at DTCM. These fees are minimal whereas the main fees comes from Dubai’s Municipality. The Municipality charges hotels 10% from hotel’s revenue (DTCM2). One idea to go around this is for DTCM to work with Dubai’s Municipality to get some of the fees waived. This idea has been done before for 3 and 4- star hotels where the Municipality waived fees for 2 years (DTCM2).
For the other incentives (paying for upgrade to energy efficient equipment and flexible adoption share of solar), DTCM suggests further discussions would need to be conducted with the DTCM board and leadership as well as DEWA and the hotel operators to further refine the value propositions.