Abstract
Luxury hotels generate substantial carbon footprint and scholarly research is urgently required to better understand how it could be effectively mitigated. This study adopts a method of life cycle energy analysis (LCEA) to assess the energy and carbon performance of six luxury, five star, hotels located in Iran. The results of the energy and carbon assessment of luxury hotels in Iran are compared against the energy and carbon values reported in past hotel research. This current study finds that luxury hotels in Iran are up to 3–4 times more energy- and 7 times more carbon-intense than similar hotels examined in past research. Low cost of fossil fuels, international trade sanctions and the lack of governmental and corporate energy conservation targets discourage Iranian hoteliers from carbon footprint mitigation. To counteract poor energy and carbon efficiency of luxury hotels in Iran, it is important to relax economic sanctions, develop alternative energy sources, refine corporate energy conservation targets, regularly benchmark hotel energy performance and enable exchange of good practices amongst Iranian hoteliers.