Effective Communication strategy to Reduce Plate Waste on Hotel Buffets

Main objective 8 1. Specific Objectives 8 1. Research Questions 8 2. Literature Review 9 2. Consumption of resources in accommodation of tourist 9 2. Chinese food waste production 20 3. Effective communication design to enhance environmental sustainability 20 3. Experiment Design 22 3. Step 2- expert Interview 27 3. Sampling 28 References 30 Effective Communication strategy to Reduce Plate Waste on Hotel Buffets in Switzerland 1. It is worrying how governments and other agencies are getting more concerned about food shortages in the world, but little is discussed concerning the issue of food wastage. It is difficult to account for food wastage at the national level because the traditional approaches used to depend on interviews, direct evaluation of garbage, measurement of plate waste and use of other inferential techniques applicable across the food chain. The amount of food wasted is as a resulted of difference between produced/prepared and consumed food.

The trend is increasing because the amount of food lost keeps on growing annually. For instance, according to report by FAO, close to 900-kilocalories of food per person in every day was wasted in 1974 but the figure increased to 1400 kilocalories in 2003 as indicated by the following solid curve. In case of Switzerland, the quantitative data regarding wastage of food is rare, and the available one is incomplete. For instance, research by Federal of Environmental Institute in Swiss carried out analysis on the flow of biogenic products in the country. Its results indicated that 1. million tonnes and 0. million tonnes of plant and animal products respectively were consumed in 2006, but it did not account for any losses. The research will address the concern of food waste produced in tourism and hospitality industry on a pre-consumption stage, using communication strategy.

More specifically, the study will focus on what to communicate to the guests in the hotel buffets in Switzerland to reduce food waste and suggests a field experiment design to measure the effectiveness of the communication message(s). Hereafter, the term “plate waste” will be used as equivalent to the food left in the plate that is not consumed entirely. The plate waste is thrown out as trash in many cases. According to research, “Plate waste is normally determined by weighing the left-over food or by visual estimation of the amount of food” (Williams& Walton, 2011). Figure 1: Hofstede's cultural dimension, 2010 1. Research objectives 1. Main objective To determine the effective Communication strategy and its efficiency in Reducing Plate Waste on Hotel Buffets in Switzerland.

Specific Objectives 1. To Identify an effective guest communication message(s) to reduce plate waste on hotel buffets for hotel guests in general and Chinese guests, 2. Instead, the hotel owners focus on soft-pro-environmental services that do not interfere with the satisfaction of their guests so long as they have paid for the services without considering the end long-term result to the environment. In such a case, raising awareness concerning pattern of consumption by such guests will be a more progressive approach. Such awareness can only be achieved by applying mindfulness approach. It refers to “being in the present, using self-regulation and control to monitor one’s thoughts and behaviors and it is linked to lower materialism and reduced ecological impacts. ” A mindful guest would wish for eco-feedback that engages him/her in control of food consumption.

People tend to portray different faces such as positive face aimed at gaining respect and negative face that appears when one feels constrained by other people. Understanding level of politeness is important for both the persuadee and the communicator because it helps in encouraging a change of behavior. People will least comply with the request by the communicator if they feel threatened, something that occurs when one does not consider the feelings of persuadee (Kitamura, 200). Therefore, the research by Warren et al. provides optimism that there is an opportunity for hotels to reserve the resource, stay sustainable, and offer high guest satisfaction at the same time through communicating to them the importance of ecological preservation. The process of nudging can help in substantial reduction of waste in hotels without affecting the levels of consumer satisfaction.

Further, reduced levels of food wastage help in financial saving of the hotel as well as reduced levels of toxic gases emitted during the process of food disposal. The outcome of their research indicated a reduction in plate waste by 19. achieved by reduction of the size of the plate. Further, a 20. The survey indicated that a lot of food waste is recorded underserving and plate waste as shown in the following diagram. Figure 3: Percentage of food wasted at different levels of chain The researchers concluded that the primary agents resulting plate waste are too large portions served by the staff to clients and failure to experience hunger by consumers. However, in the tourism industry, the guests are allowed to take meals from buffet during service without any limitation, increasing the probability of plate waste than in any other service industry.

Therefore, effective communication is the only strategy that can help in addressing such food wastage. Designing experiment for measuring proposed communication messages The process of designing experiment for measuring effective communication messages depends on previous studies aimed at better understanding of the factors that encourage guests and other domestic consumers to participate in ecological preservation measures. The other experiment was carried out within 53 days and data collected involved 1,595 instances of towel reuse. The research also stressed the significance of comprehensive training for the accommodation attendants because they were assigned the role of data collection. The attendants were given instructions numerous times in different languages and were given pictures showing detailed information concerning what was or not supposed to be part of the initiative (Goldstein et al.

Designing Food waste Campaigns Research shows that most of the people in the world are unaware of the amount of food that is wasted right from production, storage, processing and during consumption and it financial and environmental impacts. Collection of food wasted in food chain process is associated with a lot of benefits because it helps in accounting and raising awareness concerning the amount of food wasted. “Stop wasting food” is another food waste campaign in Denmark that provides guidelines concerning different ways of avoiding food waste by promoting proper shopping and household planning patterns. The initiative recorded a 25% reduction in the amount of food wasted from 2010 to 2015 in Denmark. The initiative supports supermarkets in developing strategies of minimizing food waste, and it has also introduced “doggy bags” to a lot of hotels in European Union, a practice that is becoming popular.

Cultural Background impact on Plate Waste reduction communication The Chinese culture plays a significant role towards increased statistical figures of plate waste in Switzerland. According to the 2016 annual report released by STF (Swiss tourism Federation), approximately 45. Methodology Research methodology is a ‘systematic way of solving the research problem. ’ It involves different procedures that are generally followed by a researcher in the study a specific research problem alongside other application logic. The research will apply both inductive and explorative research strategies based on the expert interview and literature analysis. Inductive research “involves the search for a pattern from observation and the development of explanations – theories – for those patterns through series of hypotheses. ” On the other hand, the explorative approach will not be aimed at providing conclusive answers concerning research questions, but it will help in exploring the topic of research with different depths.

The analysis of such data collected will involve the creation of description concerning the conduct of the guests and analysis to determine what such behaviors mean. Step 1 &4-Literature Review 3. Sustainable communication A sustainable communication is the one that can yield to positive results regarding the set objective. Hotel owners can communicate through what they say, what they do or even by what they are. Some people in the hospitality industry who communicate to guests ought to be cautious concerning how they pass messages. Such actions can result in sustainable communication to guests because it is something that they can directly observe from the hotel employees. Motivations to reduce food waste The reduction of food wastage during supply chain process is attributed to some motivating factors that make different individuals see the need of reducing such waste.

One of the luxury hotels in Swiss adopted a motivating tactic to reduce levels of food wastage by guests within its premises. The Monopol Hotel manager used signs of emaciated young people as a warning to its guests concerning overloading on food in its buffets while serving their meals. The note that is translated into both Chinese and English language reads; “The malnourished children die…and in Switzerland people waste food and throw it away. According to research, “China generates 17-18 million tonnes of food waste each year – enough to feed 30-50 million people. ” Another research involving loss of food shows that close to 40 million tonnes of food is wasted during storage, processing or even during transportation, amounting to 6% of agricultural produce in China (Piesse, 2017).

Chinese people waste food at a lower rate compared to Americans who threw away almost 60 million tonnes of food per year. However, if Chinese people start becoming rich like Americans, the quantity of food waste is likely going to increase because it is a trend that is noted in the developing countries. The system of food in China shares features of both low and high economic countries. Step one: Choosing a Green storyline The process involving coming up with a relevant title of the story or message that you want to deliver to the stakeholders. It is defined as “a sequence of connected actions that people have performed, are performing, or will perform to advance a particular goal or resolve a particular problem” (Jameson & Brownell, 2012).

In this case, a storyline is an accurate and coherent account of how and why the business has already changed or is planning to change the surrounding values into specific actions. The storyline can be based on environmental conservation, finance or service story. Step two: Focus of the story Step two involves different modes of delivering the story as part of communication approach in the business. Experiment Design Research by Kombo and Tromp in 2006, defines experiment design as the structured arrangement of condition to collection and analysis of data in tandem with the significance of the purpose of study (Kombo & Tromp, 2006). Further research by Kothari 2003, gave a blueprint to data collection, measurement, and analysis that treatment on experiments units is deliberately imposed in the interest of observing the response.

Further, “a factor becomes a controlled independent variable; a variable whose levels are set by the experimenter”(Kumar, 2008, p. In this case, the experimental units will be hotel guests in Switzerland, the treatments will be exposed to communication message, and the factors will be possible different kinds of communication messages. A descriptive survey will be used for purposes of soliciting information from respondents about plate waste and possible communication messages to towards reducing food waste in Switzerland. Dependent variable It is a variable that dependents on other variables being measured in a study. In this research, the dependent variable will be Guests’ plate waste production behavior. The behavior keeps on changing from one guest to another depending on cultural background. Control The experimental control refers to a group or a set of items in research that are statistically same as the group tested, on which no changes are implemented.

The use of control group in this experiment will help in easier comparison of the research results to determine whether the treatment will give the expected outcome or vice versa. It is a reasonable level that will be acceptable after conducting statistical tests of the data collected during the research. On the other hand, the possibility of accepting null hypothesis when it is wrong (Type II error) is referred as beta. In this case, type II error will be set at 0. meaning that there will be only 2% chance of accepting hypothesis when it is wrong. Such margins of both types I and II errors will be achieved by having a large sample size for the study. Nevertheless, during the study of Chinese guests within the recommended sample, Chinese people involved in control and test groups will be compared and analyzed separately because they play a significant role in the research.

CRD is proposed for random selection of samples because of its flexibility because it has no limited number of treatments that can be investigated. Also, it allows easy statistical analysis of ANOVA and other analytical tools. Timing The proposed time to conduct the experiment is during the peak season of hospitality and tourism sector in Switzerland. Thus, the research will have a short time span within which a lot of data is expected to be collected. Census approach minimizes errors resulting from sampling and avails data concerning all the people. It will allow sampling of the entire population of guests in small groups to get desirable precision level. The sample size will be determined based on research by Mugenda Mugenda 2009 which assumes that good sample size should be between 10% and 30% of the target population.

Step 2- expert Interview It is a section that will involve interviewing experts from tourism and hospitality industry to help in validating results in steps 1. Expert interview refers to personal interviews conducted between interviewers and respondent who is an expert in the subject of study. Also, the expert interview is specifically aimed at collecting reliable information because its respondents are very competent (Libakova & Sertakova, 2015). Sampling The main objective of sampling is come up with a representative sample from a large group of people or objects so that the researcher can use it to develop accurate generalizations regarding the large population. Researchers concentrate on specific methods that will result in highly representative research samples. There are two approaches of sampling; probability and nonprobability sampling methods.

This research will use nonprobability sampling method where every unit within a large a group does not have a specific chance of selection. In case such experts fail to respond positively, staff from other hotels will be contacted until the right respondents for the study are found. The volunteers will be notified further concerning the proposed interview time and questions via email messages. The interviews will later be transcribed and coded to give out results before combining them with literature review from step 1 to propose the messages that will be communicated to the Chinese guests. References Bengtsson, M. How to plan and perform a qualitative study using content analysis. June 19). News. com. au. Retrieved October 12, 2017, from http://www. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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