A contabilidade ambiental como instrumento de gestão turística: o caso da hotelaria de Caxias do Sul

Abstract

Massive tourism has caused negative impacts to the natural environment, forcing tourism related companies, specially hotels, to introduce actions for environmental protection into its management procedures. Environmental Accounting, as an instrument for evaluation and assistance to environmental management, can demonstrate and make public the adopted measures and the results reached with these practices. According to this aspect, based on the expectation of understanding sustainable development, a questionnaire from the Green Deal Program, used in Guatemala, has been applied, intending to demonstrate the environmental managerial practices used in five hotels in Caxias do Sul/Brazil.After measuring the environmental action in the selected hotels, that is, those with at least one hundred rooms, with the assistance of the indicators used by the mentioned program, the information has been transformed in an uniform data system. Based on the Environmental Accounting theory, a model of Management Related Balance of Environmental Practices (MBEP) has been prepared, from a qualitative point of view, where environmental debit and credit are brought up in the empirical investigation. The model demonstrates the results of the environmental performance researched on the selected hotels in Caxias do Sul/Brazil.