Trabalho apresentado em International Conference on Water Energy Food and Sustainability (ICoWEFS 2021), 10-12 maio 2021, Leiria, PortugalTourism industry is one of the fastest growing in recent years,
before the pandemic, and is a well-known industry with excessive consumption
of water. Climate change together with the abusive use of water resources
change the hydrological cycle, thus causing water supply problems. Consequently, tourism companies must undertake actions to change the direction
based on a more structured knowledge and vision.
This work is based on the study of water consumption in the various activities of tourist accommodations in the Iberian Peninsula. It aims to compare the
perception of their consumption against the published reference values, as well
as to apply measures to reduce water consumption.
The applied methodology is based on an initial bibliographic research of the
state of the art, reference values for consumption, and the influencing factors in
tourist accommodation. Following, the perception of consumption is assessed
through an online survey targeting Portuguese and Spanish hoteliers. The survey was conducted in the first months of 2020 and 174 responses were obtained, 101 from Spain and 73 from Portugal.
The results show that the surveyed hoteliers do not have the perception of
water consumption, since in general they do not make measurements, are unaware of the consumption of each sector within the hotel and mostly refer to
consumption below the reference values. Regarding the measures that have already been implemented to reduce water consumption, they represent measures
of lower cost and easier application and that do not require major changes.N/
