The first step in creating a more environmentally sound hotel industry should be a performance analysis of the hotel sector from an environmental perspective. An assessment measuring the level of environmental awareness among hoteliers and their willingness/ability to exercise corporate environmental responsibility should be performed in order to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a hotel-environment relationship. Unfortunately, only a limited number of studies dealing with environmental attitudes and activities within the hotel industry are currently available. Two of the most comprehensive investigations include the 2001 Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey European Hotel's Implementation of Environmental Policies published in Hospitality Directions - Europe Edition in July 2001, and the 1999 Worldwide Hotel Industry Study, prepared and published by Horwath International and Smith Travel Research. The former includes results from leading European hotel operators accounting for approximately 10% of the total room stock. The latter is of a more global character and includes data from over 3000 hotels (Vögl 1998). Unfortunately, neither of these publications have been available to the authors, indicating possible difficulties faced by hotelier interested in reading these reports.

In an attempt to fill in the information gap a study of environmental awareness in the hotel sectors in Sweden, Poland and Croatia was conducted (Bohdanowicz 2003). The three countries investigated in this survey represent interesting case studies in respect to issues of environmental concern at different levels of society and economy.