Checking in to a posh hotel has always been an indulgence. Now, in many places, it can also be a good deed. News Editor Kevin Doyle reports on why high-end hotels are going socially responsible and how a growing number of travelers are choosing to help others by spoiling themselves

The distance from Shinta Mani, my boutique hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia, to the rice paddies outside town is about 30 miles, and nearly as many centuries. After 20 minutes, the pavement ends and the road we're driving on turns to packed and rutted red earth. Then the cyclos, carrying tourists to temples, and the stick gatherers, carrying backbreaking bundles of wood to market, disappear. Soon, all we see from the hotel van is one vast and billowy plain of green, with only an occasional tree or grass hut interrupting the view to the horizon.

Like the hundreds of thousands of travelers who come here each year, I've spent a few days with a local guide, scrambling over the ancient ruins at Angkor Wat and the other temple complexes nearby. But today, I've opted for something few visitors are privy to: a look at contemporary Cambodia on a tour of the countryside, led by Arif Billah, Shinta Mani's general manager. "When I first arrived here nine months ago, I thought that was where the pigs lived," Billah says, as we pass one of the ramshackle huts of woven grass on stilts. "But these are homes. When it rains, the people are wet. When it's windy, they're in dust. When it floods, they swim."

We pull up to a hut where a young woman is bathing her toddler in water she has just pumped from a well. A few feet away, Billah shows me the gray, fetid puddle that the woman used for water until two months ago, when a Shinta Mani guest donated the well after taking a tour like this one. "It's been so much better for us," the woman says through an interpreter. "The children haven't been getting sick."

With its modern rooms, attentive service, slate-lined pool, and full spa, Shinta Mani is like many other luxury hotels in Siem Reap. But there is an important difference: It is one of a small but growing number of upscale properties in poor areas that are making significant contributions to the community. Since opening its doors three years ago, Shinta Mani has built more than 60 wells for local families, all of them paid for by guests. Cost: $85 each. The hotel also finances and runs a hospitality school where 21 students a year—most referred by local relief agencies—are given free admission, meals, uniforms, and a monthly stipend. After graduating, the students are placed in jobs that pay $60 to $100 per month—two to three times the country's average income. "These students come here with less than nothing," says Billah, who worked at some of Bali's top resorts before arriving in Siem Reap. "They scavenge the garbage dump or work the rice fields, but after a few months they're real hospitality professionals."

From Africa to Asia to Central and South America, travel to developing countries is on the rise. In Cambodia alone, the number of visitors climbed 2,600 percent between 1990 and 2000, and an orgy of high-end hotel construction in Siem Reap can barely keep pace with demand. According to the World Tourism Organization, 11 of the 12 countries with the most people living in poverty—including Brazil and China—are established or rapidly growing tourist destinations. For luxury travelers—many paying hundreds of dollars a night for a room—the local standard of living can be jarring: One morning over a breakfast of fluffy eggs and fresh rolls, I read in the Cambodia Daily of Prime Minister Hun Sen's repudiation of reports that five villagers in another province had just died of starvation.