Case Study: Many hotels have started corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs or projects. Swissotel, for example, has been actively sponsoring SOS Children's Villages - a fund that supports children and families all over the world - since 1999 (Swissotel, 2019). In a similar vein, Empire Hotels initiated a charity campaign in 2009 called "The Art of Caring." The objective of this program is to help local youth with disabilities, supporting them in their education and rehabilitation (Empire Hotel, 2019). Shangri-La also introduced two CSR projects around the same time - one that would care for people and another that would care for nature. The former, called Embrace, launched in 2009 and committed each hotel to a five to ten-year partnership with a chosen beneficiary working on children's health or education programs. The latter, named Sanctuary, launched in 2010 with the aim of protecting natural habitats and conserving biodiversity. To date, there are a total of 16 Sanctuary projects in place worldwide wherein individual hotels assess and then develop, track, and monitor biodiversity in their local environs (Shangri-la, 2019).
More recently, Stay Well group partnered with the Heart and Lung Transplant Trust to sponsor their 2016 Tour de Transplant in Victoria, Australia. The Trust seeks to provide heart and lung transplant recipients and their care-givers with comfortable and affordable accommodation (Stay Well Group, 2019).
1. Why do hotels engage in CSR?
2. Why do they publicize these activities?
3. What other types of responsibility projects should hotels consider?