Held October 10, 2007 in New York City, the Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Congress 2007 brought together industry leaders from companies including Marriott, Ritz Carlton, Fairmont, Four Seasons, Regent Cruises, Air France, and Linblad Expeditions to explore issue surrounding travel and social responsibility. Here Tricia Barnett, director of Tourism Concern, discusses how the tourism industry can work to be more socially responsible.

Tourism Concern has long advocated that international tourism companies must accept that corporate social responsibility should be embedded in their policies and their day to day practice in order for the industry to be genuinely sustainable.

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of corporate social responsibility has become an essential framework for changing management practice. This has happened in order to regain consumer confidence against a background of decreasing public trust in business standards and ethical behavior. Major industry players see corporate social responsibility as a pre-requisite for sustainable development of industrial and service operations.

So what is corporate social responsibility? It is based on the premise that sustainability cannot be achieved without corporate acceptance of responsibility to society at large as well as to shareholders. Such responsibility has to be integrated into every aspect of corporate policy and practice. Major players in the business world now see this as an essential component of visionary, good business practices. However, tourism and hospitality businesses lag far behind. This is not about philanthropy. Corporate social responsibility means

ensuring that the benefits from business reach all stakeholders and that business practices are transparent and accountable. Corporate social responsibility means acting responsibility in host countries and incorporating ethical principles–such as a respect for human rights and anti-corrupt behavior–into business practices.

The tourism industry still has a long way to go. The hospitality industry, which serves the relatively wealthy, is particularly vulnerable to accusations of irresponsibility since hotels operate in some of the poorest communities in the world. Despite some very good work by international hotel companies, particularly in environmental protection, and A growing awareness of social impacts, hotel development too often degrades vulnerable environments and communities.

The hotel industry has yet to face the reality of the damage resulting from its impact on society. For the most part, the industry is still discussing how corporate social responsibility can save money by saving energy and minimizing pollution. But today's companies are facing more fundamental issues of accountability and governance: issues that involve human rights, inequalities, governmental influence and social development. These complex matters need to be widely debated and require collaborative and creative solutions.

In 2004 Tourism Concern published its research on labor standards in the travel industry: "Labor Standards, Social Responsibility and Tourism." The objective of the report was to question the exclusion of labor rights and working conditions from the dialogue on corporate social responsibility in the tourism sector. Labor conditions are invisible on the CSR agenda. Research was undertaken in hotels in five popular destinations - Mexico, Bali, the Canary Islands, Dominican Republic and Egypt. Hotels were chosen to be representative of those destinations, and both staff and management were interviewed. All hotels selected were in current brochures of major European tour operators, and many were also used by North American operators.