Accreditation and Certification Schemes in Hospitality Industry

Accreditation/Certification Schemes in Hospitality Industry

Accreditation and certification schemes exist to recognize best practices in any industry. In the hospitality industry some compulsory standards are established through variety of means including accreditation, legislation and industry membership requirements that are meant to recognize good practices in various areas including "health and safety, competence standards, occupational safety, land use planning, licensing of businesses and consumer protection." (Font and Harris, 2004)

Some voluntary standards also exist which come in the form of training manuals which help companies in the hospitality industry improve performance in different areas to meet membership requirements. For example Pearl Continental Hotel in Pakistan is a small five star hotel in the country. It has been a member of the Leading small five star hotels in the world for many years now. This kind of recognition however is not easily achieved. The hotel had to meet strict requirements and to improve operations to meet the membership criteria.

The establishment of voluntary standards can be considered a part of the certification process because these standards are recommended by a certification body and this process is called conformity assessment. These standards are highly relevant to the tourism and hospitality industry and the main purpose of the process is to allow firms to achieve recognition in various areas of service. "The overall aim is that the label of this certification program will be recognized by consumers or distribution channels, and considered as added value that leads to its acceptance in the marketplace, to support the marketing of companies that meet standards." (Font and Harris, 2004)

There are many regional and local certification schemes and according to WTO report, there are over 500 labels and codes that aim to recognize best practices in this area. But these certifications and labels tend to confuse people as "too many eco-labels with different meanings, criteria, geographical scope, confusing messages, limited expertise and expensive systems, only partly meeting the requirements of compliance assessment (Font, 2002, p 203)." These labels are meant to recognize eco-friendly practices by the hospitality industry which can otherwise cause great eco damage and hence green shield is important. A 2008 report by WTO concluded that, "efforts to lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are still largely in their infancy in the tourism sector and thus far have been taken without any vision of a co-ordinated sector-wide response (UNWTO, 2008, pg18)."

Hospitality industries in different countries have different reasons for adoption of certification standards. China for example has two main driving factors for complying with standards and these are reputation and environmental achievement (Fryxell et al., 2008). One tourism company in Australia for example has received accreditation in the form of full GG 21 and ISO 14001. The owner of this firm states that the main driving force behind receiving this accreditation was the value that they add to a firm's reputation (Chapman, 2008).

ISO certification is by far the most universally recognized certificate of good performance. The one which is most popular in the hospitality industry is ISO 14001 which is related to good sustainability efforts. This accreditation is so important that currently 20 million people in 140 countries are working in 130,000 organizations which are ISO 14001 certified.

"The ISO 14001 is developed by the International Organization for Standardization, the world's leading developer of International Standards. ISO, a nongovernmental organization and network of national standards institutes of 157 countries, one member per country, from all regions of the world. Its aim is the identification and development of International Standards required by business, government and in partnership with sectors that will enforce them. Therefore ISO standards have international consensus amongst the broadest possible number of stakeholder groups and is widely respected and accepted by the public and private sectors at the international level (www.sustainable-tourism.org)."

Certification schemes in Hospitality Industry in Scandinavia