The Greening of Hotels in the UK and Italy: A Cross-cultural Study of the Promotion of Environmental Sustainability of Comparable Corpora of Hotel Websites

摘要

The increase in environmental awareness over the last decade has led to the progressive greening of consumers in all sectors. The rise of environmental consumerism has forced all types of businesses and industries to promote products and services which are eco-friendly. Given the consolidated effects of the greening processes on the tourism industry, the hospitality sector, in particular, is making an effort to persuade tourists of their environmental responsibility. The purpose of this article is to analyze the discourse used by hotels when promoting the green practices put forth by the companies to express their environmental concern. The analysis conducted on comparable corpora of British and Italian hotel websites highlights the companies’ attempt to promote their ecological awareness by adapting different linguistic strategies which are influenced by the dominating cultural orientations.