Abstract
Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in hospitality and tourism is laden with contradictions. From the simple “carbon offsetting” of budget flights to the warning from the Maldivian Government that their country will disappear due to rising water levels whilst also building, in one year, at least seven additional airports to service their resort islands. The academic literature does not always help; the continually inconclusive or contradictory findings of financial impact studies, often meaningless CSR reporting, and consumer cynicism over perceived “green-washing” activities (Farrington et al., 2017) further contribute to the lack of clarity in this area. There is a need for a substantive move towards sustainable, ethical, responsible, environmentally or socially friendly strategies, but also towards concern for the well-being of future generations in the coming decades (Farrington et al., 2017; Jones et al., 2016; Wells et al., 2016a). Despite continued interest, this is a challenge for many countries, particularly with regards to meeting the ever-shifting opinions and customer expectations surrounding environmental issues pertaining to modern hospitality and tourism. Research should fundamentally debate the relevance and application of sustainability to the sector and its relationship with external stakeholders, and move away from narrow focuses. More specifically, ‘one size does not fit all’ with regards to sustainability and CSR, hence societies and organisations with different cultures and beliefs may be motivated to be involved in sustainability and CSR developments for different reasons, and may also face diverse barriers to implementation (Nyahunzvi, 2013; Thompson et al., 2018; Wells et al., 2015; Wells et al., 2016b; Xu, 2014; Yadav et al., 2016). Hence, the goal of this special issue was to encourage new theoretical and empirical development on sustainability and CSR studies in the hospitality and tourism field.Citation
Taheri, B. and Rahimi, R. (2019), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 2226-2231. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-06-2019-006Publisher
EmeraldJournal
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality ManagementAdditional Links
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/journal/ijchmType
Journal articleLanguage
enISSN
0959-6119ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1108/IJCHM-06-2019-006
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/