Hospitality & Society - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2024

This research focuses on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of tourism service providers (TSPs – tour operators, travel agencies, tourism transportation agencies, among others). We analyse TSP’s collaborative efforts through CSR practices and their social, economic and environmental dimensions. Building on a qualitative framework, we conducted structured personal interviews with fifteen representatives of Jordanian TSPs. Several contributions are worth mentioning: the analysis allows for a broader understanding of CSR practices adopted by TSPs to serve as mutual support bridges between TSPs and stakeholders in the hospitality and tourism industry; CSR practices, benefits and barriers faced by TSPs; gender gap emerging from TSPs employment policies and intersectionality; TSPs and job and tourist opportunities for people with special needs; CSR practices, sustainability and community welfare, among others. This empirical article offers insights from Jordan’s small tourism businesses, a case previously not analysed. Limitations and implications for decision-makers are also discussed.

Hotels are often regarded as (un)wittingly complicit in terms of sex traffickers using their facilities for illegal sex purchases. This article examines chain employees’ experiences of individual social responsibility (ISR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the interaction between hotels and three stakeholder groups (online booking channels; governmental and non-governmental organizations; and nearby hotels) in the fight against sex trafficking and illegal sex purchases. Employee perspectives were gathered through semi-structured interviews in Sweden and the Netherlands, two countries with distinctive prostitution legislation. The findings highlight that the hotel employees found tensions between ISR and CSR and the relationship with the external stakeholders challenging. What became apparent was that CSR is often a facade used to report back positive results to external stakeholders rather than CSR and ISR playing a proactive role in fighting sex trafficking and illegal sexual purchases. We conclude by arguing for the necessity to better understand the relationships between ISR and CSR within the hospitality industry and suggesting that there remains a need for better understandings of how CSR can work across industry stakeholders and within academic research in order to ensure actionable outcomes that make a difference.

This study aims to examine neo-liberalism and its ideological influences in the design and delivery of hospitality higher education in the United Kingdom. The study is underpinned by a qualitative approach, with semi-structured interviews employed as the method for data collection, with thematic analysis as the method for data analysis. Fifty-five hospitality academics working in nine universities were interviewed regarding their perceptions of being a hospitality academic teaching hospitality-related subjects in higher education. Findings were explored and analysed in relation to the broader influence of neo-liberalism on higher education and three key themes emerged, which are: restrictive conception of hospitality as the commercial hotel sector, issue of academic identity, and corporatized institutional leadership. Under the backdrop of neo-liberalism, the higher education sector has prioritized graduate employability as one of its primary responsibilities. Subsequently, hospitality higher education is predominantly viewed akin to a form of professional training programme for the commercial hotel sector, and being a hospitality academic is mainly perceived as an industry mentor, educating students with industry-relevant skills and professional practices. Institutionally, the increasing corporatization of higher education has created an environment which hospitality programmes are positioned to satisfy market demands and secure student recruitment. Informed by these findings, the current study draws the conclusion that there is a strong presence of the neo-liberal ideology reinforcing a vocational ‘filter’ on the design and delivery of hospitality higher education, which legitimizes certain educational values and practices while neglecting and undermining others. This article proposes that greater interdisciplinary engagement with other academic subjects, more recruitment of academics with a broader understanding of hospitality, and institutional leadership that appreciates and encourages alternative pedagogical approaches, are keys to creating possibilities to incorporate a more critical and humanistic underpinning in the academic development of hospitality.