Toward a responsible luxury in the hotel industry Kenza AHED (10120877) MSC in Marketing Dublin Business School January 2015 1 Declaration: I declare that all the work in this dissertation is entirely my own unless the words have been placed in inverted commas and referenced with the original source. Furthermore, texts cited are referenced as such, and placed in the reference section. A full reference section is included within this thesis. No part of this work has been previously submitted for assessment, in any form, either at Dublin Business School or any other institution. Signed: Kenza AHED………………………… Date:…15/01/2015………………………... 2 Table of content ACKNOWLEDGMENT 6 AIMS AND RATIONALE FOR THE PROPOSED RESEARCH 8 RECIPIENTS FOR RESEARCH IDENTIFIED 11 NEW AND RELEVANT RESEARCH 11 SUSTAINABILITY OF RESEARCHER FOR THE RESEARCH: 12 TIME, COST AND THE MANAGEMENT 12 LITERATURE REVIEW 13 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23 3.1 RESEARCH METHODS CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 23 3.2 RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY 23 3.3 RESEARCH APPROACH 26 3.4 RESEARCH STRATEGY 26 3.5 RESEARCH CHOICE 27 3.6 TIME HORIZON 28 3.7 DATA COLLECTION 28 3.7-1 SECONDARY DATA COLLECTION 28 3.7-2 PRIMARY QUALITATIVE DATA COLLECTION 30 3.7-3 PRIMARY QUANTITATIVE DATA COLLECTION 33 3.7-4 DATA ANALYSIS 33 3.8 POPULATION SAMPLING 34 3.9 ETHICAL ISSUES AND PROCEDURE 36 3.10 LIMITATION OF THE RESEARCH 36 DATA ANALYSIS/ FINDINGS CHAPTER 37 4.1 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF TOURISM ACTORS IN FRENCH POLYNESIA 37 4.2 QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF LOCAL STUDENT: SUSTAINABILITY WITHIN THE COMMUNITY 46 DISCUSSION CHAPTER 52 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 60 APPENDICES 64 APPENDIX 1: KOLB’S LEARNING STYLE 64 APPENDIX 2: TIME SCHEDULE GANTT CHART 66 APPENDIX 3: PACIFIC BEACHCOMBER PORTFOLIO 67 APPENDIX 4: PORTRAIT OF THE PACIFIC BEACHCOMBER CEO (THE BRANDO DOCUMENT) 68 APPENDIX 5: FUNNEL 70 APPENDIX 6: ONETAHI MOTU 71 APPENDIX 7: CONTENTMENT SHEET 72 APPENDIX 8: QUALITATIVE INTERVIEW 79 APPENDIX 9: QUANTITATIVE DESIGN QUESTIONS 127 APPENDIX 10: BRANDO AWARDS (THE BRANDO DOCUMENT) 129 APPENDIX 11: THE BRANDO RESPONSIBLE LUXURY (THE BRANDO DOCUMENT) 130 APPENDIX 12: THE BRANDO MISSION (DOCUMENT PROVIDED BY THE BRANDO HOTEL) 133 APPENDIX 13: SELF REFLEXION ON OWN LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE: 134 GLOSSARY: 136 3 REFERENCES 138 BIBLIOGRAPHY: 141 4 List of Tables and Figures Page Figure 1: Distance by plan……………………………………………………………..9 Figure 2: Virtuous circles uniting luxury and sustainability………………………….15 Figure 3: Sustainability diamond……………………………………………………. 16 Figure 4: Sharing value……………………………………………………………….18 Figure 5: Tools to analyse the sustainable ecotourism………………………………..21 Figure 6: Sustainable ecotourism analysis: qualitative data framework……………...34 Figure 7: ZPT…………………………………………………………………………44 Table 1: Question 1…………………………………………………………………...46 Table 2: Question 2 ………………………………………………………………….47 Table 3: Question 3…………………………………………………………………...47 Table 4: Question 4…………………………………………………………………...47 Table 5: Question 5…………………………………………………………………...48 Table 6: Question 6…………………………………………………………………...49 Table 7: Question 7…………………………………………………………………...49 Table 8: Question 8…………………………………………………………………...49 Table 9: Question 9…………………………………………………………………...50 Table 10: Question 10 …...…………………………………………………………. .50 Table 11: Question 11………………………………………………………………...51 Table 12: Question 12………………………………………………………………...51 5 Acknowledgment I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my tutor Mr Gary Bernie for his excellent guidance, advice during my research. I would like to thanks the participants who agreed to be interviewed and to respond to my questionnaire. Finally I would like to thank my family and friends that supported me during my research. 6 Abstract: The problem: This paper investigates in the sustainable luxury strategy for the hotel industry in French Polynesia, with a particular focus on the Brando hotel. Indeed, the luxury hospitality industry has seen a growing market, named sustainable ecotourism due to an evolution of their wealthy clientele. This paper investigates in the main issues of an insular environment with regards to this strategy. In order to explore these issues, this investigation applied Jitpakdee and Thapa (2012) analysing tool of the sustainable eco tourism indicators, which considered environmental, economic and sociocultural indicators. The methodology: Required qualitative data from 7 participants whom are actors in French Polynesia tourism market, agreed to take part in the qualitative research, which subscribed to an exploratory study. The quantitative research had 51 local students as a sample size; the data collected used the survey strategy. The overall research design used cross-sectional qualitative and quantitative design. Conclusion and Recommendation: The findings were that indeed luxury and sustainability has sharing value such as time, beauty, richness, and nature. Plus, the sustainable luxury strategy start to be developed in the hospitality industry in French Polynesia, indeed the Brando hotel by using renewable energies and new technologies in Tetiaroa Private Island, an atoll near by Tahiti, joins in this approach. Thus eco innovation has an important role in the strategy, it allows managing and preserving the environment. Plus a new model is starting, as the hotel has partnerships with non- profit organisation on site, which helps through research and education to subscribe in sociocultural and environmental sustainability. Nonetheless, this strategy needs to be developed at the destination scale, as it becomes to be a standard in the field. However the insularity of French Polynesia due to it small island environment challenge the economic sustainability, plus it requires special management on site and for the stakeholders. Furthermore, this alliance meet limits, at some point the luxury international standards, has sometimes no coherence in regard to the sustainable development concept. 7 Introduction Aims and rationale for the proposed research The aim of the research is to discover the possible alliance of luxury and sustainable development as one strategy for the hotel industry in French Polynesia. Luxury and sustainable alliance is not intrinsic. Luxury from the Greek origin luxus signified excess, however the luxury definition has evolve through time, and multiple synonym can be given, it is refinement, superfluous, hedonism but one aspect remains it is the price notion (Chevalier, Mazzalovo and Randon-Furling, 2008). As sustainable development concept includes social equality, economic efficiency and the preservation of the environment (Lochard and Murat; 2011) at first side, the different concept seems to be opposite. This study deals with luxury hotels in luxury tourism. Different luxury hotel that takes in consideration the sustainable development concept into their DNA has emerged such as Endemico in Mexico, Orchid in India, Fregate in Seychelles, and the hospitality group Sense that is present worldwide. In addition, the UNWOT, World Tourism Organization, the leading international organization in the field of tourism (Www2.unwto.org, 2015) highlighted that the ecotourism is very fashionable in the tourism market, with an annual growth of 5% worldwide (Lochard and Murat; 2011). In addition, 20% of tourist around the world would be nature tourist by 2020 (Jitpakdee and Thapa, 2012). This particular form of tourism exists and will increase in the future. To this end, the increase of nature tourist is interesting for French Polynesia tourism because this destination is surrounded by sea treasure and land treasure; French Polynesia is composed of 118 geographically dispersed island and atolls (Wikipedia, 2014). Plus Polynesia is known as paradise and position itself as a luxury destination, so luxurious hotel are part of the set. One new hotel has been designed and though in order to integrate the sustainable development in its DNA. It is called; the Brando hotel and it has the particularity to be Marlon Brando’s ownership, therefore it is a private atoll, named Tetiaroa, an atoll near by Tahiti. This hotel aims to be 100% ecological by using renewable energies and at the same time deliver a luxurious stay. Therefore, the discovery will be dealing with this new model: luxury and sustainability, how they can coexist in the hotel industry and can be managed in an island economy that it means in an insular environment. The island destination has a special dimension of destination management practices, one of them is the isolation they are most of the time far from mainland; here, the case of French Polynesia where the nearest mainland is at seven hours by plane. 8 Figure 1: Distances by plane Through this research I will discover what are the mains actions that allows this model to succeed and what are the challenges that this model can face. This innovative project, involves a different strategy in the marketing and management fields. In order to find out how they do to manage the coexistence of those two different concepts, my research question is: How luxury can coexist with sustainable development strategy for the Brando hotel in French Polynesia? Thus, the research objectives are; to discover how integrate a sustainable development strategy in a luxury DNA; to discover the sustainable development strategy in a tourism framework; to identify the changes in the management and communication by using sustainable development in its luxury strategy, to discover the motivation/interest of building a resort which aims to be 100% ecological; to discover the benefices that LEED certification