Travelmole Question Time: Tour operators come under fire from Tourism Concern
Tourism Concern has slammed tour operators for not doing enough to adopt Corporate Social Responsibility.
The organisation, which campaigns for ethical and fairly traded tourism, said many companies are just paying lip service to CSR, particularly when it comes to non-environmental matters.
Programme manager Guyonne James, in the audience at yesterday’s Travelmole Travel Industry Question Time on CSR, said operators are failing to carry out social impact assessments on their suppliers.
“First Choice is leading the way, but there is a lot less commitment from the other tour operators. Where are they today?” she said.
“Some of the major players are devoting only about three hours a week to these issues. That’s just not enough.”
Jane Ashton, head of CSR for First Choice, said the operator was making progress in this area, but admitted that the travel industry was behind other sectors, like retailing.
“It’s early days and it’s challenging,” she said.
“It’s a big problem for the specialist tour operators. They might have thousands of suppliers but they are only sending a small number of clients to each one. It’s not cost effective for them to do an in-depth audit on every supplier.”
Tourism Concern said many companies were starting to focus on the impact of tourism on the environment, but this was only a small part of CSR.
“Everybody is focussed on the environment, but what about displacement and labour conditions?” asked James.
“Governments should be protecting society but in some of the developing countries this is not the case. Where the government fails to take the regulatory role, should a company go ahead and exploit this? That’s the really big dilemma.”
Sue Hurdle, chief executive of the Travel Foundation, agreed that there is currently too much of an emphasis on green issues, but explained: “It’s the easiest one to get your head around. On the plus side, raised awareness about climate change is also helping to raise awareness about all the other aspects of CSR. We’ve seen a huge change, but there is still a long way to go and companies are at different stages of development.”
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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