Environmental issues are increasingly recognised as a significant concern for tourism industries worldwide. In this exploratory work, a model of environmental practices adoption and its impact on independent hotels is developed. Two different destinations are proposed and analysed: the mature market of Madrid in Spain and the emerging destinations of Santiago and Valparaiso in Chile. To test the model, a qualitative method based on case studies of 24 hotels-12 hotels for each country-was used. The findings show that environmental practices are implemented in both destinations and demonstrate the diverse impacts of this implementation, primarily in the financial and operational spheres. Differences are observed in the two countries regarding the proposed model, mainly in terms of barriers to implementing environmental practices, products used and processes related to clients and suppliers' responsibility. Therefore, this research implies that the hotels analysed are adopting an environmental management approach, although in different ways. The added value of this research is that it sheds light on the vision of sustainability in emerging and mature destinations and offers practical suggestions for hotel management regarding the implementation of various environmental practices and new environmental practices in hotel management. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.