The Need for Business Environmental and Social Responsibility in the Tourism Industry

ABSTRACT This paper is on the relevance and application of the Business Environmental and Social Responsibility (BESR) concept in the hotel sector. In this paper, the literature is reviewed and analyzed to establish the connection between tourism and the physical and social environments. The review shows an inevitable link between tourism activities with both environments. This and the strong tourism growth in the past, implies that tourism has far-reaching negative impacts that must be mitigated, not only for the good of the physical and social environments, but also for the sustainability of the industry itself. However, the review also indicates that past misconceptions about tourism as an environmentally benign industry has led to a slow integration of responsible environmental and social considerations into tourism planning and development. It was not until the late 1980s that the industry began to address the issue and acknowledged the importance of sustainable tourism as the industry's new direction. The lack of consensus on a single comprehensive meaning of sustainable tourism further compounded the complexity of operationalizing the concept. The proposition of alternative tourism as the answer for all tourism ills between the late 1980s and early 1990s, was later found to be flawed. This instigated the need for a new way of thinking that takes into consideration the fragmented nature of the industry. In other words, sustainable tourism requires a collective and conscious effort of all tourism businesses, governmental policymakers and planners as well as the key stakeholders (the society, the NGOs, the CBOs and the tourists) to prioritize environmental and social issues in their daily undertakings. In the case of tourism business, the new shift in thinking mirrors the wider corporate debate that has until recently been focused on the manufacturing sector (see Welford, 2000; Utting, 2002; Elkington et al., 1998). Hotel, as one of the key tourism business, therefore needs to deal with its environmental and social obligations.