Dr Mireia Guix

While extensive research covers the disclosure of performance in sustainability reports, there is limited understanding of the process of how such reports are developed and whose priorities they reflect. We investigate the sustainability reporting, focusing on stakeholder-related practices disclosed by the 50 largest hotel groups worldwide, by testing the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard. We use the three interrelated dimensions (inclusiveness, materiality and responsiveness) to assess the disclosure of how organisations (1) identify and engage with stakeholders, (2) determine the importance of sustainability issues, and (3) respond to stakeholder concerns. We find the low transparency and imprecision of decision-making criteria and processes suggest sustainability reporting is more of a legitimisation exercise than one of accountability. We find the stakeholder identification approach does not inform the organisation’s transparency, whereas the dialogue mechanisms used to empower stakeholders, as their participatory role in decision-making and the reporting process, shape the disclosure of materiality and responsiveness. We demonstrate how that the ability to determine stakeholder engagement, materiality analysis and responsiveness of the sustainability reporting process can improve the role of sustainability reports as a mechanism for accountability, and we argue the importance of the alignment between the degree of disclosure on inclusiveness, materiality and responsiveness.

Creating Shared Value hinges on the interdependence between a company's success and social welfare, and also the identification and expansion of connections between that company and society. Because critics say the concept is counterproductive, in that it focuses too narrowly on the company's economic value creation, we take a materiality analysis approach of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This approach provides evidence of what is important to stakeholders and promotes meaningful corporate disclosure, central to the Global Reporting Initiative. This study reports on a materiality analysis of the cruise industry, comparing stakeholder concerns/demands with both the relevant literature and existing CSR reports to determine to what extent the current industry definition of its social responsibility matches the expectations of its stakeholders, and subsequently, to theorise reasons for the patterns found. Results evidence that cruise companies tend to both over-report immaterial issues and underreport material issues, without responding to stakeholders' requests.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) refers to all types of responsibility that organisations have on all aspects of making our society more sustainable. Hence CSR encompasses the economic, environmental, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has of an organisation at a given point in time (Carroll and Shabana 2010). Responsibility is therefore the process of acknowledging and managing impacts, while sustainability is the performance achieved as an outcome. This chapter lays the foundations of the sustainable behaviour of an organisation and its evolution towards more strategic and value creating. The first section introduces the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. We then explain the evolution of the concept of CSR in relation to different theoretical approaches used to justify the business case for CSR: resource based view of the firm, reputation and risk management, and stakeholder management.  Later, we suggest that the cutting edge in CSR is ensuring that companies develop sustainable competitive advantage putting at work the Creating Shared Value framework, and while the concept is rather aspirational, we reflect on the methods available to do so for the tourism industry. In doing so, this chapter traces the rationale for corporate social responsibility and suggests avenues for further research.

This chapter proposes a working definition and a set of criteria for how the cruise sector should acknowledge its corporate social responsibility (CSR), from the perspective that CSR must have the ability to create value to both society and the companies themselves. It also summarizes the key impacts that cruise companies communicated in their 2009-2011 reports and, more recently, in their updated 2015 reports. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the materiality of CSR reports. The analysis allows one to draw conclusions regarding the extent to which the current cruise industry's definition of its corporate social responsibilities matches the expectations of its stakeholders; it also looks at the evolution of the content of the CSR reports and theorizes reasons for patterns found.

This chapter presents the Integral Tourism Destination Planning methodology (ITDP), including the key elements of the responsible tourism approach, aimed at enhancing the effective planning of heritage tourism destinations. Firstly, the chapter revisits the theoretical concepts of: (i) destination planning, to present the evolution towards (ii) sustainable development management, to stress the need of long-term strategies underpinning destination planning and responsible tourism as the approach to achieve sustainable development by involving the key stakeholders of a destination and calling on their responsibility; and (iii) stakeholder theory as a key element of destination planning. Then, the chapter details the ITDP methodology, explaining its generic steps. A case study of the Quispicanchi Province in Peru exemplifies the tourism planning process and its consequences in the planning of a heritage site, such as the Andean Baroque Route.