Thinking and acting in a sustainable way: Environmental management skills in Finnish and Latvian tourism enterprises

Abstract

Tourism enterprises face increasing pressure to become greener, which requires upskilling the skillset of their employees to enable them to contribute to enterprises’ environmental performance. Therefore, the aim of this comparative research is to increase understanding of the needed environmental management skills in tourism enterprises by exploring relevant practices in two Baltic Sea countries: Finland and Latvia. Including these two countries and their different operating environments gives a broader understanding of the needed environmental management skills in a tourism enterprise at different levels, that is, strategic, tactical, and operational. The results show that the readiness to implement environmental management at these three levels is highly linked with the environmental performance at the country level. The higher the performance at the country level, the more strategic environmental management is in tourism enterprises. In addition, the study highlights the connection of tourism policy development and implementation to the environmental performance and skills in tourism enterprises. The results support tourism enterprises in ensuring that employees working in different positions have relevant environmental management skills to engage in environmentally responsible work behaviour.