The potential of environmentally – friendly hotel development in Azerbaijan

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to find out the potential of environmentally friendly hotel development in the Azerbaijan hotel industry. The main objectives are the evaluation of the public's perception of the “green” label in hotels, its potential to become a popular and preferred spot in the Azerbaijani market, and profitability notion of a phenomenon by taking into consideration the consumers’ willingness to pay for “green” hotels over traditional hotels in the industry. The research has been carried out via online semi – structured interviews and open – ended survey questionsto analyze the topic from both hotel managers’ and customers’ perspectives and correlate the relationship between the two angles. Moreover, the researcher attempted to crosscheck the hotel customers’ and managers’ responses in order to be able to assess the authenticity of the reactions. To add, the researcher figured out that the interviews and surveys to be conducted on an online basis is the most rational approach to collect the data due to COVID 19 and lockdown complications (Moreno, Fuentes – Lara & Navarro, 2020). The qualitative data analysis was conducted by following interpretivist research philosophy and applying the inductive reasoning method along with the thematic analysis technique. The researcher attempted to encode the qualitative data through the thematic analysis technique and used themes as coding units. Consequently, three themes were discovered by the researcher which were corresponded with the three objectives of the thesis. The qualitative data covered two parts which are primary data and secondary data. The primary data sets were gathered in this project through online semi – structured interviews and open – ended survey questions answered by managers of different brand hotels and consumers of the hotel industry in Azerbaijan, whereas the information provided by professionals and customers was supported by comprehensive academic research regarding the application of “green” practices in international countries obtained from academic books, papers, and articles, which is the secondary data (Irwin, 2013). After evaluating the findings, the researcher provided the discussions of the results in the project and drew conclusion lines based on research outcomes, as well as, the researcher specified limitations of the results and further recommendations.