Responsible Tourism and CSR

Mara Manente is Director of CISET, the International Center of Studies on Tourism Economics of Ca' Foscari University Venice. She has more than 20 years of experience in tourism research and training. She is a member of UNWTO Committee on Statistics and the Tourism Satellite Accounts (TSA), of the EC Tourism Sustainability Group and of ISTAT Working Group on the national TSA. Manente is also a consultant for various international and national institutions.

Valeria Mighetti is Chief Senior Researcher at CISET. She has more than 15 years of experience in teaching, researching and writing on tourism subjects. She has co-ordinated and worked on a number of projects for important national and international organizations (ISTAT, EUROSTAT, European Commission, UNWTO, etc.). Her main research interests include: tourism demand analysis and forecasting; the impacts of tourism at local level; sustainability and responsibility in tourism; IT innovation in tourism.

Erica Mingotto is Junior Researcher at CISET. She has a Master's Program in Economics from Ca' Foscari University Venice, with a thesis on the development of responsible tourism and the diffusion of CSR in the tourism sector. Her main research interests include the study of sustainable development, responsible tourism and CSR and the assessment of effectiveness and efficiency of public actions in tourism.

What are Responsible Tourism and Corporate Social Responsibility? What is the industry's awareness regarding these concepts? What are the systems and tools currently available on the market that tourism SMEs can use to assess their engagement and the sustainability of their business?

This book is aimed at replying to these questions and offering an innovative contribution to the current debate in the field. After having defined Responsible Tourism and CSR and the environment in which these methodologies develop, the authors present and compare the main European assessment and certification systems, describe their characteristics and functionalities and discuss the relevant issues concerning their application.

Through the AHP model and the selection of a number of relevant case histories, the suitability and efficacy of these systems in monitoring the level of responsibility of tourism SMEs are analyzed and debated. The results obtained contribute to enhance the recognition and diffusion of CSR principles in tourism and to support tourism businesses in choosing the assessment tool that best fits with their characteristics and the nature of their activity. The study also enables students and researchers to build or enhance their knowledge about the main reporting initiatives available in Europe and to assess the potential of the mathematical model applied for this kind of study.