Purpose The Spanish hospitality industry is facing environmental challenges which require organisations and individuals to learn new skills and practices and create new environmental knowledge. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationships between an unlearning context and environmental knowledge. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyses the relationships between an unlearning context and environmental knowledge and tries to identify whether environmental knowledge impacts on business outcomes through an empirical study of 127 Spanish hospitality companies. Findings The results support the hypothesis that, in order to create environmental knowledge and hence foster the application of new environmental knowledge, companies need to provide and support an unlearning context. Research limitations/implications It is important that managers provide an appropriate unlearning context to support the openness of individuals to new ideas and environmental awareness. Originality/value This study provides hotel managers with a better understanding of the relationship between environmental knowledge and organisational outcomes and highlights that managers need to provide and support an unlearning context, which is customised and based on three frameworks: the framework for examining the lens through which individuals view situations; the framework for changing individual habits and the framework for consolidating emergent understandings.