Sustainability in Hospitality

How Innovative Hotels are Transforming the Industry

Miguel Angel Gardetti, Ana Laura Torres, Miguel Angel Gardetti, Ana Laura Torres

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351285346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

This ground-breaking research represents the most complete collection yet on how the hospitality industry is addressing sustainability and ethical issues. Covering supply chain management, innovative sustainability initiatives, CSR programmes, biologically-respectful tourism and Value Creation, Sustainability in Hospitality: How Innovative Hotels are Transforming the Industry presents valuable global viewpoints on embedding sustainability into all aspects of the hospitality industry, and the impact this could have on transforming the sector into an advocate for more sustainable, eco-conscious tourism.The chapters in this edited collection span organizational governance, human rights and labour practices, environment and climate change, fair operating practices, stakeholder engagement, CSR and strategic management. The global reach of the collection brings case studies from China, the US, the UK, Mexico and Italy, while company case studies include Fairmont Luxury Hotels and Sextantio.Sustainability in Hospitality: How Innovative Hotels are Transforming the Industry will be an essential read for academics researching the development of ethically-conscious and sustainable hospitality, and for hotel managers and group CEOs who want to know how sustainability and CSR can be embedded in their day-to-day operations.

Part I
The relevance of business sustainability in the hospitality sector

1
Human rights obligations of international hotel chains

Theresa Bauer

SRH FernHochschule Riedlingen, Germany

The issue of human rights in the hospitality industry has rarely been explicitly dealt with. This chapter aims to fill this gap by examining the human rights obligations and responses of international hotel chains. The chapter introduces negative and positive responsibilities and describes distinctive challenges in different institutional environments, i.e. in democratic and in non-democratic countries. It investigates the actions of three large hotel chains: InterContinental Hotels, Hyatt and Shangri-La. These companies have explicitly recognized their human rights obligations and have implemented measures such as human rights policies, reporting on human rights issues, ethics training and signing up to the UN (United Nations) Global Compact. While the negative duty to “do no harm” has been recognized, there is a need for further appropriate responses for acting in an environment of unjust law.

Introduction

CSR (corporate social responsibility) has become an increasingly relevant topic. Various groups such as consumers, investors, governments and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) have demanded that companies meet their responsibilities towards society and ensure that operations are not only profitable, but also desirable in terms of the objectives and values of society. More recently, the corporate responsibility of respecting human rights has been recognized, both in CSR literature (Kobrin, 2009; Wettstein, 2012a, 2012b; Wettstein & Waddock, 2005; Arnold, 2010; Cragg, 2010, 2000) and in practice. The work by the UN’s special representative John Ruggie, appointed in 2005, contributed to this development with the introduction of the UN “Protect, Respect and Remedy” framework (United Nations, 2008a, 2008b) and “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” (United Nations, 2011).

At the same time, “sustainable tourism”, respectively “responsible tourism”, has become a trend and underlines the relevance of CSR for companies in the hospitality industry. Already in 1999, the UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organization) had devised and adopted a global code of ethics for tourism, designed to minimize the negative effects of tourism activity on destinations and local communities. Since then, a growing number of hotels have explicitly embraced CSR and sustainability and have developed clearly articulated and communicated CSR policies that are a result of planned decisions (see, e.g. Sloan, Legrand & Chen, 2013; Bohdanowicz & Zientara, 2008). Core CSR areas range from philanthropy and environmental concerns to the improvement of working conditions and the engagement in community development.

While CSR activities and sustainable management in the hospitality industry have received considerable attention, human rights obligations have been rarely explicitly dealt with. This chapter aims to fill this gap by examining human rights obligations in the sector conceptually and empirically. What are the human rights obligations of hotel chains and what measures are taken to fulfil them? These questions will be at the core of the chapter.

Some human rights challenges are relevant for large chains as well as smaller independent hotels, e.g. working conditions or the possible abuse of a hotel for the sexual exploitation of adults and children. Other human rights related issues only arise in the case of international chains, e.g. the decision whether to enter a non-democratic country where basic human rights are violated by the state. The empirical part of this chapter focuses on large international chains, because these have considerable power and potential to influence because of their size and resources.

The first section of this chapter explains the relation between business and human rights and briefly introduces relevant literature before negative and positive duties to “do no harm” and “do good” are elaborated on and applied to hotels. Next, the chapter provides ethical and economic/strategic justifications and analyses how human rights obligations relate to different institutional environments. The empirical part exemplifies how hotel chains approach their human rights obligations by examining the actions of three large chains: InterContinental Hotels, Hyatt and Shangri-La. This part is based on company internal and publicly available secondary sources.

Business and human rights

Human rights are “inalienable rights of all members of the human family” (UN General Assembly, 1948) whose modern conceptualization is influenced by the Enlightenment thinkers who propagated natural rights grounded on human nature (Donnelly, 1982). The protection, promotion and implementation of human rights has been accepted as one of the main responsibilities of countries and has become a core concern in international relations (Schmitz and Sikkink, 2002). Complementary obligations of companies have been identified more recently based on the insight that business conduct can significantly enhance or curb almost all kinds of human rights. International law does not directly relate to companies, and global agreements that formally require companies to respect human rights have not been reached. Yet some companies have started to integrate human rights into business practice and to cooperate in initiatives such as the BLIHR (Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights) and its successor, the GBI (Global Business Initiative) on Human Rights. Several international institutions have designed non-binding guidelines and codes of conduct for businesses to improve the human rights situation, among the earliest being the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which were originally adopted by the OECD in 1976, and the Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, introduced by the ILO (International Labour Organization) in 1977. The UN Global Compact, “the world’s leading corporate responsibility initiative” (Rasche, 2012, p. 33), promotes human rights by obliging member companies to “support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights” and to “make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses” (UN Global Compact, 2012b). Moreover, the work by the UN Special Representative John Ruggie has contributed to clarifying the meaning of corporate human rights obligations. According to Ruggie, the state has the duty to protect against human rights abuses by regulating and adjudicating corporate activities, while companies must respect human rights by not infringing on the rights of others as the baseline expectation (United Nations, 2008b, p. 9). Ruggie claims that “companies cannot be held responsible for the human rights impacts of every entity over which they may have some influence” (United Nations, 2008a, p. 5), but still recognizes the risk of becoming complicit in violations committed by third parties. Thus, companies should “seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts” (United Nations, 2011, p. 14). Ruggie has developed a number of concrete recommendations that have been widely accepted among governments, business and civil society, although some critical voices have noted lacking external monitoring mechanisms (e.g. Frankental, 2013).

Companies that are committed to uphold business ethics will not necessarily see human rights as constraining guidelines; instead they may view them as helpful ones. Operating in a large number of countries (with differing value systems) can be a challenge when it comes to taking morally appropriate decisions that comply with various guest country and home country expectations. Human rights provide an important point of reference across countries and regions; yet they need to be interpreted and implemented in a “culturally sensitive” way (Wettstein, 2009, p. 144).

Human rights issues have long been neglected by business ethics and CSR scholars (see Wettstein, 2009), but have increasingly attracted attention especially in the context of multinational corporations operating in developing countries (Kobrin, 2009; Wettstein, 2012a, 2012b; Wettstein & Waddock, 2005; Arnold, 2010; Cragg, 2010; Cragg, 2000). Controversies have arisen on the issue as to whether corporate human rights obligations extend to all human rights equally, or whether they are limited to specific rights. For example, Arnold (2010) argues that the obligations of companies differ depending on the sort of rights; he distinguishes basic human rights that are essential for a decent human life, namely liberty, physical security and subsistence, from aspirational rights such as unlimited access to high-quality education and healthcare.

Human rights obligations in the hospitality industry have been seldom investigated explicitly. Yet a number of studies have dealt with specific issues that clearly touch upon human rights. This holds especially in the context of human resources management, where key topics (among others) have been labour practices, gender and diversity management (e.g. Manoharan et al., 2014) and prevention of sexual harassment of employees (e.g. Oliveira & Ambrósio, 2013). Other central issues relating to human rights issues in the sector are children’s rights (e.g. Sadar, 2011), i.e. prevention of child labour and child sex tourism, and human trafficking (e.g. Tepelus, 2008). The studies on these specific aspects lay an important basis for considering the human rights obligations of hotel chains in a more general way, as this chapter aims to show.

Negative and positive duties: “Do no harm” and “Do good”

When establishing human rights as guiding principles for hotel chains, two alternative approaches can be taken. The focus could be on the negative duty to “do no harm” or on the positive duty to “do good” (Wood, 2012, pp. 64–5). Negative duties are broadly accepted among scholars in the human rights field, i.e. there is wide agreement regarding the claim that business operations may not infringe on human rights. In the case of international hotel chains, the negative duty requires specific measures to forestall human rights violations through business activities.

The positive duty to “do good” is controversial and calls for further explanation. Positive duties could be established by following Hsieh (2004, 2009). He builds on the philosophy of John Rawls to identify a “duty of assistance” for companies owned by members of well-ordered societies to help burdened societies.¹ In his view, a company ought to help to achieve reasonably just or decent institutions, provided the government of a well-ordered society does not fulfil its duty of assistance and the company is to benefit from operating in countries that are not well ordered. A company may promote well-ordered institutions: indirectly through normal business activities by contributing to economic development; and/or directly, e.g. in the form of technical assistance and training. Wettstein (2012b) goes one step further and propagates a positive duty of large international companies when another party harms human rights, i.e. the company ought to come to the victims’ help or assistance, speak out and put pressure on perpetrating host governments. Otherwise, moral approval of human rights violations is given. Not only academics but also practitioners argue for positive duties of that kind. The UN Global Compact recommends that companies should “privately and publicly condemn systematic and continuous human rights abuses” (UN Global Compact, 2012a). In the case of international hotel chains, the positive duty to “do good” could entail contributing to economic prosperity in developing countries through normal business operations; but it could also be interpreted as the duty to intervene with the local government, e.g. in case a critic of the regime has taken refuge in the hotel and is about to be arrested simply because he or she has claimed freedom of opinion.

However, there are concerns regarding positive duties among scholars and practitioners. One could object that the expectation to “do good” is too far-reaching. Besides, one might argue that businesses should not be involved in politics by intervening with governments in order to improve the human rights situation. Defenders of liberalism such as the influ...