Importance Of Corporate Social Responsibility Within Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay

Importance Of Corporate Social Responsibility Within Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay It is recognized fact that the complicated and serious environmental and social issues need strict and serious concerns of business and investment societies. Apart of the challenges this provides professionals a golden chance to contribute in solving these issues through their corporate social responsibility policies and make their business or brand well known. The following formal report shows how and why Corporate Social Responsibility is important in a business specially in hospitality industry and how big hotels implement their Corporate Social Responsibility policies in their organisations to achieve their goals and what did they get in result. Many groups of hotels such as Marriott, Lancaster and Apex are implicating different CSR policies, plans and strategies and having positive results. Approximately 275 Marriott hotels and buildings have changed in green hotels and have achieved Energy Star Label from the Environment Protection Agency. On the other hand Lancaster hotel which is holder of Green Tourism for London Silver Award has its own green team who investigates and suggests the ways how to reduce carbon emissions and wastes. Most of the restaurants can include in corporate social responsibility by recycling their cooking oil. For example in the UK McDonalds started to convert their cooking oil into bio-diesel and now it is running its vehicles on that cooking oil. Olympic 2012 games are going to be held in England, the following report includes how many extra visitors are going to visit UK. Some problems indicated which could be faced by hospitality industry and report includes some suggestions for these problems. Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing promise by organisation to act graciously and provide to the economic expansion while improving the quality of life of the employees and their families as well as of the local society(www.mallenbaker.net) According to Andriof and Mclntosh (2001) Corporate Social responsibility is that an organisation does has some flow-on effect either outside or inside the organisation, from employees and customers to communities and the environment. They argue that these impacts have ripple effect on society that can be divided into three categories. These are: Social Education, social issues and employee volunteering etc. Economic Jobs, product value and trading standards etc. Environment Emissions and waste control, energy use, product recycling and sustainability progress etc. IMPORTANCE OF CSR IN BUSINESS Now a days businesses specially hospitality industry is emphasizing on the importance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in business. CSR is not only about doing good things, it also proposes business benefits and the best way to have attraction of media, publicity, respect in society and in its customers and customers not only want to go to respected business, they persist on it. This way on one side companies are doing good things to the community and customers and on the other hand increasing their business. These are some reasons organisations pay attention on their CSR policies and always try to improve them. BENEFITS OF CSR IN BUSINESS There are many benefits of CSR in business, some of them are Social Engagement with the local community and authorities Good reputation of business Globalization Economic If an organisation has good reputation it is easy to recruit people Less turnover because of good reputation can decrease cost of recruitment Workers are more productive Good publicity in media could be the cause of rise in profit Environmental Friendly and green environment Energy saving Waste control Recycling THE ROLE OF CSR IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY The increasing pressure in the media, from government and customers for more actions on the environment is forcing increasing hospitality industry to implement new strategies, plans and environmentally friendly policies. Many hotels are adopting new technologies to reduce their wastes, recycling procedures and saving energy by acting on environment policy. For example. Lancaster hotel (holder of Green Tourism for London Silver Award) has its own green team who calculate everything hotel is doing and advise ways how to reduce carbon emissions and wastes. Lancaster hotel is using energy saving bulbs in their rooms to save energy and when a guest comes in room they have a message on TV that how we are working with green environment and how you can help. They collect different wastes separately such as bottles, papers and cardboard which helps to recycle waste easily. By doing so they have saved 7000 pounds this year against their landfill cost (www.bighospitality.co.uk). According to the Paul Sault Apex Hotels group director of revenue and commercial strategy, the paybacks of the environment and waste policies are not only restricted to the cost, we have also developed encouraging relations with customers, suppliers and the local society. (http://www.hotel-industry.co.uk) On the smaller level, many hotels in the UK have already agreed to use beginning green actions such as, most of the hotels are using now card key switches for air conditioning and electricity, linen cards for sheets and reusing towels, making sure that energy bills are much reduced.( www.hotel-industry.co.uk) For helping local community and other communities Lancaster hotel has got almost half of its guests support. New strategies of the management was they added  £1 donation with every guests invoice and at the end hotel raised  £2,443. They donated this money for charity purposes. To boost the knowledge of the hotels green policies between staff, guests and suppliers hotel raised  £500 in another fund raising effort, and donated in the green project called Lets Go, Lets Grow (www.bighospitality.co.uk) On the other hand it is really hard to tell whether hotel is actually green or not. Marriott is trying hard to be in the front row of hotels for the attention of green travel in the world. By comparing itself with other brands such as Hilton and Wyndham Marriott set out many new steps, organisation can act on specifically in five key areas: water, waste, green building, supply chain, helping protect the rainforest and guest and employee engagement. One of the programs Marriott has launched is Green Your Stay in which they offer every guest who book with them $10 for minimum stay or $1 for each day for carbon produced during their stay. Another plan of Marriott to act on is green hotels and buildings. Approximately 275 hotels have already achieved Energy Star label from the Environment Protection Agency.( www.earthandindustry.com) RECYCLING CSR STRATEGY Most of the restaurants can include in corporate social responsibility by recycling their cooking oil. For example in the UK McDonalds started to convert their cooking oil into bio-diesel and now it is running its vehicles on that cooking oil. By doing so McDonalds estimated that it can save per year 1,675 tons of carbon which is equal to removing 2,424 cars from the UK roads.( www.caterersearch.com) If all restaurants start following this procedure and send extra diesel to the fields for tractors they can help a lot to the environment to go green and can save thousands of tons of carbon every year. This procedure almost cost nothing if we compare to the benefits. Already many hotels and restaurants have started this recycling procedure and helping society and saving their cost for disposing the oil. Cost Recycling cooking oil into bio-diesel cost is almost nothing if we compare with benefits. For average restaurants Bio Diesel Processor is available only for  £315 in the UK and it can generate 160 liter oil per day with very little effort.(www.yorkshiregreenfuels.co.uk) Benefits This recycling procedure has many benefits such as, if restaurants start recycling cooking oil rather than disposing into the sewerage system they will help to decrease pollution from the environment. It will help to generate their own oil and will increase their profit They will not have to pay for their recycling oil Save energy and recourses Decrease of pollution HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY AND OLYMPIC 2012 GAMES What hospitality industry going to do for Olympic 2012 Games? UK going to be one of the busiest countries of the world in 2012 because of Olympic games. 500,000 extra visitors are expected 27,500 media and broadcasters 14,700 athletes will visit the UK and 18 million meals are expected to be served . These extra visitors are going to boost UK economy but is UK ready to take this challenge? The 2012 Olympic games give employers an exclusive chance for encouraging their personnel to volunteer and have concerned in maintaining sports and events in their communities. Chief executive of volunteering England, Justin Davis Smith says that I would urge to all employers to get involved in 2012 games by sustaining their staff in volunteering it will be a massive one off the national carnival. (www.volunteering.org.uk) As hundreds of thousands of visitors are coming to UK there will be a problem for their accommodation and hotels will need more staff for busy timings. So this plan for volunteering new staff could be helpful for their business. It will help them in many ways such as on one side it is good thing to do on other side it will help employees to develop their new skills and improve their motivation and mainly it can be helpful when economic atmosphere is miserable for some people and they are helping their local community by creating more volunteering vacancies. This is one of the good examples of corporate social responsibility for 2012 Olympic Games. (www.volunteering.org.uk) IS HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY READY FOR OLYMPIC 2012? SUGGESTIONS As mentioned above in 2012 Olympic Games 500,000 extra visitors are expected in the UK with 14,700 athletes and 27,500 from all over the world. The main problem will be accommodation for that number of visitors in one year. Some people prefer to stay in big luxurious hotels and some cannot afford to stay in that hotels and they stay in guest houses. There could be shortage of guest houses in the surrounding area of Olympic Village and it could be difficult in future. Big hotel organisations should invest and help small hotels and guest houses for that situation and they should open some new small hotels and guest houses in the surrounding areas. This will help hotel community to share their profit and deal with the busiest situation and that could be profitable for big hotels as well. By doing so they can earn profit as well as helping their community. As we know people are coming from different places of the world and they speak different languages, probably they will not be very good in English language. Hotels can play vital role in this situation by providing their guests travel books and other informative recourses in different languages. Big hotels also should higher some translators for that situation to assist their guests. In this case they will help society and their customers and they can attract more customers by providing these facilities. Another problem could be food problem, mentioned above 18 million meals are due to be served by FB. Big restaurants need to higher chefs from different origins who know how to make different kind of food according to different countries for their customers comfort. CONCLUSION Corporate Social Responsibility plays a key role in business. People are becoming more aware of the environmental issues and they prefer to be customers of eco-friendly businesses, therefore CSR has become a need for any business. Hotels are trying to be in the first row of the green travel in the world, for example, Marriott and other big groups of hotels such as Apex and Lancaster hotels are also implementing CSR policies in their organisations to be the part of green environment. This way they have increased their profits and helped to create eco-friendly environment. Hotels and restaurants need to adopt new CSR policies as McDonalds is recycling cooking oil into bio-diesel and driving its vehicles on this oil and Lancaster hotel is collecting donations and donating them in different charity organisations. England has won the tender of Olympic 2012 Games with CSR and now it is responsibility and challenge for big industries (hospitality industry) that how they implement their CSR policies in 2012 Games. Hospitality industry is going to face many challenges which are mentioned above such as, accommodation, different languages and variety of different meals and they need to prepare for these challenges.