Contemporary Issues in Hospitality Management

Individual Report

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 Contemporary Issues in Hospitality Management 2

Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Discussion ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
What is CSR? ............................................................................................................................................ 3
CSR Practical Implications (Issues and Strategies) in the Hotel Industry: Hyatt Hotels Corporation and
Meliá Hotels International ........................................................................................................................ 4
CSR Dilemmas and Specific Activities .................................................................................................... 5
Environmental Damage and Actions to Reduce Such Damages........................................................... 5
Operating With Greater Transparency for the Community and Society ............................................... 6
Strategy to Reduce Environmental Footprint and Social Damage ........................................................ 7
Evaluation and Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 8
References ................................................................................................................................................... 10
 Contemporary Issues in Hospitality Management 3

Contemporary Issues in Hospitality Management

Introduction
Worldwide, the hospitality industry has gained much popularity by serving people at the
global level. Therefore, this industry has seen a major growth during the last few years. The
Spanish and American hospitality and tourism sector is indeed a very developed business sector
in these countries and one of the key players by contributing to the Spanish and American
economy. Throughout the world, there is a fast growing awareness for organisations’ actions to
be responsible for protecting the environment as well as the local community.
The key aim and purpose of this comparative study are to crucially analyse and discuss
how two hotels, which are Hyatt Hotels Corporation (HHC), an American international
company, and Meliá Hotels International (MHI), a Spanish group, respond to the Corporate
Social Responsibility (CSR) requirements of their respective country.

Discussion
The comparative study focuses on the Hyatt Hotels and Meliá Hotels International by
analysing their approaches to CSR problems, dilemmas, issues and strategies to handle them.
Both hotels participate in the Global Compact strategic policy given by the United Nations (UN)
for business organisations with the aim of advancing their promises to sustainability and
corporate citizenship.

What is CSR?
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is all about the attainment of success at the
commercial level in such a manner that respect ethical and moral values while respect human
resources, societies, communities, and of course, the natural atmosphere (O’riordan and
Fairbrass 2008). CSR has no universally recognised definition, but the majority of the definitions
and accounts emphasise that business organisations must be an act in the best interest of the
people or community while achieving or surpassing the expectations of the general people about
good corporate citizenship (Cray et al. 2005).
CSR has been classified by Yoon, Gürhan-Canli and Schwarz (2006) as an ethical,
unselfish, or strategic approach of businesses. CSR based on ethical aspects is indeed mandatory
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and implies that a business organisation, such as a hotel, is obliged to abide by all the rules and
laws while avoiding doing harm owing to its business. This harm or damage could include water
and air pollution, defective products, and discriminating labour practices. Good policies, rules
and laws constituted by the government will frequently alleviate problems or dilemmas related to
ethical CSR (Yoon, Gürhan-Canli, and Schwarz 2006).

CSR Practical Implications (Issues and Strategies) in the Hotel Industry: Hyatt Hotels
Corporation and Meliá Hotels International
At present, the mission of tourism companies is to achieve, maintain and improve
competitive advantage through value creation. It has been established that the tourism industry
worldwide is predominantly client-focused industry, so it is crucial and becomes the norm to
operate in such a way that lead to customer satisfaction, along with value creation, brand
recognition and improvement, and as a result a stable and strong competitive advantage. MHI is
a Spanish leading hotel chain established in 1956 in Palma de Mallorca. Currently, the hotel is
considered as one of the largest hotels globally. Nowadays, it operates at least 350 hotels across
the world in about 35 countries (IHG et al. 2012). It also has its own hotel brands, including
Paradisus Resorts, ME by MHI, Sol Hotel, Gran Meliá, etc.
Moreover, the Tryp Hotels Company as a brand has also been purchased by it in the end
of 1990s but sold the brand to Wyndham Worldwide firm in 2010. However, the company still
operates the resorts as per a licensing contract (MH International 2017). Further, they also
operate their own products called the MHI brand, along with Tryp Hotels. Besides these, the
company has also signed contracts with other firms operating in the leisure sector, establishing
other facilities (IHG et al. 2012). Overall, the company’s business integrates over 350 hotels
operating by them worldwide.
HHC is a U.S.-based international company operating of hotels. In 1957, this company
was established by purchasing the Hyatt House, at Los Angeles International Airport. Recently
in 2013, the company’s portfolio across the world consisted of more than 500 properties. The
integration of Hyatt’s environmental and social promises are led to by the Corporate
Responsibility (CR) Council into their business mission and objectives, everyday operational
activities and wide-ranging programmes related to risk management. The council includes a
cross-functional cluster of leaders leading at the corporate and divisional levels and such leaders
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represent every single operational activity and corporate communications, worldwide human
resources, brand marketing, technology-based innovation, and of course, risk.
The CR Council is led by the vice president of corporate responsibility, and such a
council is responsible for reporting to the company’s chief executive officer and chief HR
officer. The council also has executive supporters as sponsors in all the operational divisions
operating globally. Several chains are operated by Hyatt, and its oldest brand is the Hyatt
Regency. Other brands are the Park Hyatt and Grand Hyatt, where were established in
1980.Besides these, some brands are designed as ‘resort’ properties with many recreational
facilities, such as spa. The Hyatt Place is one of the highly recognised brands, which was
established especially for the business travellers. HHC is an extended hotel chain because they
also acquired ‘Summerfield Suites’ in 2005, and features 34 locations throughout America
(Kumar 2014).

CSR Dilemmas and Specific Activities and Strategies

Some of the major activities and strategies HHC and MHI perform to successfully deal
with the following CSR dilemmas and issues.

Environmental Damage and Actions to Reduce Such Damages

Some major actions as strategies have been found the hotel chains can carry out with the
aim of reducing consumption of water and energy. These strategies can be lowering bills to
reducing the impact of the environment. The environmental impacts of a hotel also include the
reduction of waste and recycling, conservation of water, reduction of water and soil
contamination, reduction of air pollution, responsible building construction, design and facilities
like noise reduction, biodiversity protection, and so on.
As far as the MHI is concerned, they have made some certain strategies with the aim of
minimising the issue of environmental damage by lowering consumption of electricity. Although
they have to face hard issues, they successfully do this by benefiting of technology-based
standardisation of well-organised sustainable lighting, including LED technology and electric
eco-efficient appliances (MH International 2017).
Likewise, HHC benefits from using LED technology and electric eco-efficient appliances
with the intention of minimising energy consumption. Besides this, they have also replaced their
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traditional energy equipment from low energy-consumption technologies, including solar filters.
In this regard, they are also using solar and photovoltaic panels by installing in different hotel’s
rooftops, while utilising sustainable lights to a particular set timetable with the aim of using the
natural light at daytime. The company has also reduced the use of plastic material by replacing
conventional appliances, washing bags, etc., with materials made from biodegradable plastic
(Atlanta Regency Hyatt 2017).
MHI, to reduce water consumption by the sewerage system, has successfully controlled
the hotels’ spillage levels as well as their connections to the general public sewage system (MHI
2010). For this, the wastewater is fed to the public purification plan operating locally, and they
now their own purification systems in 3% of their hotels. Regarding recycling, the hotel chain
has also pledged to the recycling plans and strategies set by the European Commission (EU)
(Being wise with waste 2010), while signing a contract with the European Recycling Platform
(ERP) with the aim of collecting batteries and accumulators (MHI 2010).
On the other hand, Hayat Hotels is also abiding by the EU recycling strategies, by using
recycled resources in television sets, while developing a new measure or programme called
“Cork2Cork”, through which corks are reused and eco-façades are created for facilities. Besides
this, they are also making effort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and in this regard,
they have signed some contracts with their partners (Atlanta Regency Hyatt 2017).

Operating With Greater Transparency for the Community and Society

The CSR requirements are necessary to be met for hotel establishments. It means that the
hotel influences the wellbeing of the community by enhancing their quality of life, creating more
employment opportunities, and raising public awareness about sustainable development. It is
also necessary to get them involved in the decision-making process, offering choices for healthy
products, and developing a safe and secure atmosphere (Kemp and Vinke 2012). Therefore,
complete transparency and precisely updating their stakeholders are all necessary.
In this regard, HHC frequently launches programmes with the aim of minimising
sensitivity of their stakeholders towards adverse environmental impacts, as mentioned above.
They closely work with the concerned associations operating locally with the aim of preserving
biodiversity, providing protection to the environment by reducing CO2 emissions, and fostering
ethical actions conducts in the hospitality industry. Further, they have also developed the
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Knowledge Management Programme through which they successfully exchange knowledge and
information with the staff members working in other branches globally, while partaking in CSR
conferences and engaging in the teamwork with corporative universities in the industry with the
aim of sharing ethical practices (GreenBiz 2014).
Similarly, MHI has also played a pivotal role in making all of their activities transparent.
Consequently, they successfully show the favourable effects of their CSR strategies towards
pledging to a sustainable strategic management. In this regard, their 27 hotel establishments have
won the environmental certification. They have also created an efficient mechanism of reporting
to update and evaluate the wastage material produced by their hotels. They have established such
a reporting system with the intention of providing highly authentic data with consistency,
revealing the favourable environmental impact and its scope (MHI 2010).
Besides these, the company also launches campaigns with the aim of developing
awareness in the society about the preservation of biodiversity and the environment’s value
where they operate (MHI 2010). In this regard, they are using social media and let their
customers cast their votes for which of the projects of biodiversity retrieval they desired the
money to be destined to. They have also launched a project to provide protection to endangered
animal species and for this, they replaced the Christmas sales campaign. The new projects aim to
donate 1 euro to WWF Spain for every single reservation made throughout that period. They also
collaborate with TUI Travel to distribute guide through which they can raise awareness in the
society about souvenir purchasing (MHI 2010).

Strategy to Reduce Environmental Footprint and Social Damage

Across the world, the hotel as a business sector has the responsibility to maximise
linkages to the economy at the local level by building an effective relationship with suppliers,
which is a major approach to CSR within a city or country, mainly in developing areas of the
world. The economic leakage is the major weaknesses of tourism and hospitality development
throughout these countries because of international facilities and elements imports with the aim
of meeting the costumers’ needs and satisfaction levels.
In this regard, the ‘Ecomeeting’ notion was developed by Hayat Hotels, through which
they frequently arrange programmes based on CSR and sustainability requirements making sure
a development of awareness among the people regarding the sensible use of energetic resources,
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consuming such products having low environmental damages. Moreover, they also created a
notion of “Intelligent room” that is used to measure energy and water consumed by the
consumer. Thus, they can comprehend their customer’s use and develop new and innovative
strategies accordingly. The company also launched some programmes with the intention of
preventing from occupational dangers, which are for their staff members. Besides this, they have
also taken some important measures related to emergencies in hotels established in unsafe areas
(GreenBiz 2014).
As far as MHI is concerned, they have developed some innovations with the aim of
fostering sustainability. In this regard, they launched ‘SAVE project’ as a CSR approach through
which they can minimise the adverse effects of environment related to the business. This project
integrates various initiatives that help in reducing the adverse environmental effects, establishing
the ethical practices. They have also integrated a portal for staff members through which
corporate-related information and knowledge, applications, and other various services can be
easily accessed by them (MHI 2010).

Evaluation and Conclusion

In this comparative study, a lot of findings has been explored, through which the level of
knowledge regarding hotel chains operating in the tourism industry of America and Spain and
successful implementation of CSR related plans, policies and strategies. Indeed, all the CSR
initiatives and strategies mentioned above are the integral elements while making plans and
strategies for the best future of hotels.
Academic literature and real-world practice have taken CSR and its strategies as desirable
to the whole society and for organisations themselves (Abaeian, Yeoh, and Khong 2014). CSR
activities and strategies involve strong pledge and dedication beyond legal obedience, through
which an extensive array of stakeholders (employees and shareholders) are tackled successfully.
It is the fact that the hotel industry throughout the world, whether in America, Spain or anywhere
else in the world, is correlated with other different sectors concerning successful implementation
of CSR related strategies. Although there are limited resources and higher material costs, it is
still important to opt for best of the best CSR initiatives and to comprehensive assess their
overall costs that are the hard issues for both HHC and MHI, especially when they come to the
global markets that are very competitive (Chang et al. 2015).
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In this comparative study, it has been found that initiatives and strategies related to CSR
have the strong potential to bring a great deal of economic and financial gains to hotel firms,
such as HHC and MHI. In this comparative analysis, which included two different hotel chains
from two different regions, HHC and MHI have been established as the best practice cases in the
global hotel industry. It has been proved that both hotel chains have made and integrate major
CSR initiatives with the strong focus on minimising adverse environmental effects.
Minimising consumption of energy by means of new and innovative technologies,
benefiting from recycling process to recycle materials, and other activities are a few best
instances of those CSR strategies. As far as the operational activities in the best interest of the
society and community with much transparency, it will be noted that both hotel chains pay a
regular contribution to the Global Compact Organisation, but only MHI uses Global Reporting
Initiative so as to develop sustainability reports. This approach provides them with a great deal of
transparency because the hotels are engaged in such activities that are consistent with practices
and guiding principles recognised at the international level.
Moreover, the CSR implementation level in the U.S. and Spanish hotel sector is still in a
progressing stage, the reasons behind this progress are the increasing demands of some of the
giant hotels (Kang, Lee, and Huh 2010). Nevertheless, the consensus at the broader level has
been found through which CSR is advancing resulting in the quite positive impacts at the
economic level in hotels. These are core benefits associated with better comprehending of the
needs, wants and demands of customers, enhancing performance and productivity levels of staff
members because of professional training along with high motivation level, accomplishing
highly cost-effective savings or producing more innovative products or processes capable of
attaining, maintaining and improving competitive advantages (Kang, Lee, and Huh 2010).
Relating to developing disruptive innovations by adopting new technology to reduce
adverse environmental effects and social damage, HHC and MHI behave very ethically towards
meeting this. The CSR approaches of both companies are helpful in sharing common
environmentally-friendly and ethical practices within their hotel chains operating globally.
Besides this, both hotel chains take the society and community as a crucial asset, hence making
efforts towards successfully meeting the fundamental demands and expectations of lowest social
communities worldwide to enable them to be live well.
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