The phenomenon of climate change and the hospitality industry in Egypt

الملخص EN

Global climate change is considered one of the most problematic environmental issues of our era.

Recently, tourism and hospitality industry has attracted the attention as both an important contributor to climate changc and as an industry that is potentially at high risk.This paper aims to explore hotel managers and domestic tourists’ attitudes / beliefs regarding the phenomenon of climate change in Egypt and fmd out in what ways hotels can adapt to climate change.

Qualitative and quantitative approaches are used to captxu^e respondents’ views.

Semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey were used to collect the data.

Seven intervievt^ were conducted with hotel managers in Alexandria city and a sum of 250 formsweredistributed to domestic tourists.The results revealedhoteliers’ acknowledgement that hotel activities added to climate change, however their actions still not enough to adapt to such a phenomenon.

On the other hand, most domestic tourists doubted the happening of climate change believing that it was a natural phenomenon occurring without human intervention.

The paper provides a model to assist hotels respond to climate change issues.

It concludes that government intervention is nccessary to create meaningful behavioral change among people via providing awareness and setting targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for industrial and commercial businesses like large hotels.