Corporate Social Responsibility and the Meetings Sector

For the last few months I’ve been part of a team based in the International Centre for Research in Events, Tourism & Hospitality (ICRETH) at Leeds Metropolitan University undertaking a major survey on the meetings industry’s attitudes towards, and engagement with, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In a double-header event this week, my colleague James Musgrave and I are releasing the latest findings at Confex and ITB respectively. I get the delights of a 3 day trip to Berlin where I’m part of a panel involved in ITB’s CSR day on 7^th March, whilst James heads down to London for the day .

Our research has involved analysing questionnaires from more than 1,100 meetings industry professionals worldwide – including venues, meeting planners and suppliers – and backing this up with in-depth interviews with another 70+ contacts from around the world. We are almost at the end of the data gathering phase and are now able to launch some of the headline findings in advance of producing the main study report in April.

One of the main things that we’ve found is that around 9 out of 10 meeting industry businesses are now actively engaging with CSR, with 1 in 4 saying they are very active. Reasons for doing this vary but in the main people are NOT driven by the profit motive – few people believe that being active in CSR improves overall bottom line performance.  But many of our sources have told us that having a formal CSR policy is important in getting them onto tender lists and approved supplier lists. Indeed, more than 30% of respondents said that they already give preference to suppliers who have a demonstrative commitment to CSR.

As well as developing business performance with suppliers, having a CSR policy also demonstrates credibility and trustworthiness to clients and, to some extent, still provides some market differentiation. However, external pressures are such that it is likely that engagement with CSR will grow across the sector in the next 5 to 10 years with more and more people following the current industry leaders. This in turn is likely to be the ‘tipping point’ needed for the more committed organisations to convert their current approach to engagement, which tends not to be recognised with external accreditation, into something that is recognised by one of the several accreditation initiatives. We certainly expect the launch of ISO 20121 later this year to focus people’s attention on the benefits of accreditation and there are some in the sector who feel that unless the industry as a whole engages more with voluntary standards, then there may be the risk of enforced regulation, particularly regarding environmental and social policies.

One final point that is of particular interest to the team, working as we do in Higher Education, is the emerging belief across the meetings industry that without a formal and coherent approach to CSR, employers may find it increasingly difficult to hire the best candidates. This generation, more than any other, is increasingly committed to finding employers whose ethics and world view reflect their own. Quite simply, if they don’t like the way you treat the environment and the community around you, they are unlikely to want to work with you either.

For more details of the project, please contact me on s.c.woodward@leedsmet.ac.uk

Pet tourism

As a dog owner I am sometimes limited in the places I can visit when out for the day. Many locations (understandably) don't allow dogs other than assistance dogs to enter their premises. So it is always nice to find somewhere that not only lets them in, but actively thanks you for supporting their business. So I present to you the Oliver's Mount cafe in Scarborough, a basic little place on the side of a hill overlooking the town. Dogs are welcome in the cafe, there is lots of space outside for them to scamper around and, best of all, they get a treat for visiting. In fact, it looked so good I almost ate one myself but didn't, sticking instead to my cup of Bovril!

A friend in New Zealand, the driving force behind http://www.caninespirit.co.nz/, is researching the topic of pets and tourism for her PhD. So expect more blogs on this topic in the future. And in the meantime, think about what you could do to help develop this niche market!

Universities and destination development

I was recently asked to write a book chapter on the subject of universities and their contribution to tourism. Surprisingly little has been written on the subject  - in the late 1990s one academic wrote a bit on the use of university accommodation and in 2000 UNESCO published a whole journal about university museums.  But I have been struggling to find more detailed research on the role of universities in place making for tourism, or in destination development.  So the next few weeks are going to involve a lot of primary research, an intensive literature review and some rapid writing up.  That’s not an excuse for me not updating the blog on a regular basis, but bear with me and I’ll be able to share some interesting stuff in a month or so. In the meantime, here is a picture of the James Graham Building at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK - this campus will be hosting a training camp for the Chinese athletics squad competing at the 2012 Olympics this summer - sports & events tourism  based at university campuses is surely one area that is worthy of further investigation by someone.

Students as tourists or residents

I have spent the day engrossed in a literature review associated with some research I'm doing in partnership with Dr Elizabeth Carnegie of the University of Sheffield, looking at student engagement with the World Heritage Site in Durham.  We are interested in whether or not living and studying within a WHS has an impact on their attitudes to heritage in general, and to the values of the WHS in particular.

There is a growing body of research that looks at how tourists engage with (or don't) World Heritage values in destinations, and other researchers have focussed more on how communities react to, and are affected by, WHS status. But no-one has yet looked at how students engage with WHS - they are short-term residents, spending 9 to 12 weeks at a time in the area, several times a year for 3 or 4 years. So according to UNWTO definitions, they are tourists.  But their motivations for staying in the destination are very particular, and it is unlikely that WHS status had anything to do with their decision to travel to the city in question (whilst we are looking at Durham, there are many other WHS that have universities and colleges in their core). 
Thinking of Durham in particular, the heritage of the peninsula, that part of the city ascribed WHS status, plays a key role in creating the atmosphere that is valued by many university students.  Already, we have anecdotal evidence that students living in one of the colleges that looks on to the great East Window feel inspired by the view when looking at it from their rooms, whilst we know that the opportunity to graduate in a ceremony held within the cathedral is valued by some university alumni.
Our first phase of primary research will start next week, with the first public presentation of our findings being at a conference Liz is attending in the Caribbean in January. That will be followed by another presentation at a one-day seminar on Communities and World Heritage we are hosting in Durham in March, and finally a paper that will be submitted to a leading academic journal some time in the spring.

Responsible Tourism around the Mediterranean

Have been pondering on a couple of the points made by Justin Francis, CEO of www.responsibletravel.com, at a recent evening seminar for ICRT students and alumni. He was talking about the 10 things that will change tourism, for good or for the worse, in the coming years and two of his 'top ten' were the Arab Spring and the economic crisis facing the PIGS. It is clear, even from the events in Tahrir Square and in Sirte last night, that the repercussions of the Arab Spring are still being worked out across the MENA region and it will be some time before destinations like Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia see their visitor numbers returning to anything like 2010 levels. Meanwhile, what will be the impact on destination marketing and management budgets of government cuts in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal as they struggle to bring their budget deficits under control?

I am a geographer by academic background and what really interests me about this situation around the Mediterranean is what impact there will be on tourism flows? Will there be a major increase in outbound tourism to Turkey as Europeans continue to search for their two weeks of sunshine? Or will the emerging destination of the Azores take up some of the demand diverted away from the MENA region in particular? And where will Morocco go? It gets a lot of business from Spain but with a major recession there, it may see numbers fall. Yet it too has experienced some unrest and analysts believe that it too may still see changes. And what the tourism sector needs is certainty, not uncertainty.

So - it is going to be an interested few months and we should watch the early UNWTO returns for 2011 with a lot of interest, to see who really has benefited from these major changes happening around the Med. One thing we know for sure though, is that the residents of these countries will feel these changes far more than we ever will.

Family holidays in the Lake District

Not having kids ourselves, we have been spared the trauma that goes with so many holidays - "where to go so that there is enough to do to keep them occupied so they don't moan about missing their friends", and "where can we go that doesn't cost an arm and a leg"? Well, we are just back from a week in the English Lake District having had a great week with our American friends and their three teenage kids.

True, having a 19 year old and 2 16 year olds meant that nothing much happened before mid-morning apart from 3 of the four adults (plus dog) going on a 4 mile run up the valley from where we were staying. And it also constrained a little the level of cultural activity (tho' we redressed that after they left on thursday to go down to Sussex for a wedding, with a trip to the amazing Arts & Crafts house at Blackwell - see photo of one of the windows above). But I had completely forgotten (a) how beautiful the Northern Lakes are in early summer and (b) how much investment there has been in good quality tourism products.

The town of Keswick, near our base of Bassenthwaite Village, is selling itself as the outdoor capital of the UK (I know - Fort William begs to differ) and there is certainly an outdoor equipment shop on every corner and in quite a few locations in between. Properly kitted out, we were ready for a walk around the shores of Derwentwater, a climb up Cat Bells (beloved by many as the home of Mrs Tiggywinkle and a hill I'd not climbed since 1972, at the age of 12 - this time I was able to take the dog), a canoeing trip across Derwentwater and, best of all, an afternoon exploring the slate mines of Honister using the Via Ferrata, zipwires and even a couple of old mine workings.

This mix of paid-for and free access recreational provision is what makes the Lake District such a good family holiday destination - every evening we collapsed around the table in our lovely cottage garden, teased each other about the day's disasters (the nine month old labrador jumping out of the Canadian Canoe just as we launched, requiring several trips back to the shore to get him in was but one mini-crisis) and planned the next adventure.
At a time when budgets are squeezed, and when the UK tourism sector is seeking to strengthen awareness of its potential as a destination for a main holiday, those in charge of developing and marketing the Lakes have much to be proud of. True, there were a few blatant attempts at price-gouging (£14.95 for a DVD with 80, mainly blurry, photos of the Via Ferrata trip was a rip off - shame on you Honister!) but by and large everything was good value. The weather was OK and the company great. For my first 'main' holiday in England since 1977, I couldn't have chosen a better place.

P.S. I didn't forget about work and the responsible tourism movement whilst I was there - lots of evidence of environmentally and socially sustainable action across the board. But in writing this blog I decided to focus on the fun element of holidays and tourism, something we professionals often forget!

An 'Evening With' ICRT students and alumni

Just back from London where I spoke to a small but enthusiastic group of ICRT students, alumni and a prospective student (thanks for coming along Caroline - hope you enjoyed it!) about some of the consultancy work I have been doing. My last blog covered much of what I was speaking about: how we need community passion behind any attempt to develop heritage-based tourism, but that without the public sector's ability to mobilise and mediate between different stakeholders (and often also to provide core funding) such projects often fail. What was interesting to me was how the conversation towards the end of the evening took a quite unexpected turn, coming around to the issue of whether or not there is ever a business case for investing in heritage conservation from a tourism perspective. Having analysed the issue from a number of sides, we came round to the decision that whilst there is very rarely, if ever, a BUSINESS case, there is quite often a broader economic development case. In other words, the public sector's role is to intervene in a situation where there would be conventional market failure in order to ensure the broader benefits are delivered. My problem is that I know I've read all this before, but can't remember where. So it's off to the library for a load more research before I start updating my teaching materials for next year!