Environmental certification and Spanish hotels' performance in the 2008 financial crisis

Limited funds available in times of financial crisis may lead hotel managers to deem environmental actions dispensable. Hence, the need to analyze whether hotels that decided to maintain environmental management measures during the 2008 crisis better withstood its negative effects. The aim of this study is to analyze whether environmental management influenced the performance of Spanish hotels during the 2008 crisis. Through the panel data technique, a comparison is made of how sales, workers and assets management affected the financial performance of hotels with and without environmental certification EMAS and ISO 14001 in the period prior to the financial crisis (2002-2007) and during it (2008-2013). The results demonstrate that, while for non-certified hotels, the effect of sales, workers and assets management on financial performance worsened in the crisis period, for certified hotels it remained the same. In addition, no evidence has been obtained to show that the financial performance of certified hotels was higher than non-certified hotels in either the period prior to the crisis or during it. Nevertheless, the general results confirm that certification permitted Spanish hotels to cope better with the crisis since the adverse effects were less severe than for the non-certified hotels.