CSR (Communication) of Hotels and Consumer Responses Towards It

Whereas Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an established concept in the world of business and academia for several decades now, in the hotel industry, CSR has become a subject of more intensified research only recently. Consumer perceptions about CSR and the communication thereof as well as the inclusion of such matters in their hotel online reviews have not received deeper attention in the literature so far, although it is of vital importance to gain this information as feedback on the success of hotels’ current CSR engagement. This paper reports on the results of four studies that investigated consumers’ perceptions of CSR measures in the hotel industry, online CSR communication of hotels, consumers’ references to CSR in online reviews and finally, hotel responses to customer online reviews. Via three focus groups, a website analysis, an online review analysis and an online review response analysis, these questions are answered. Findings show that there is still great consumer unawareness regarding the potential to talk about CSR issues in online reviews. Hotels also do not yet interact much with customers on online review platforms but rather communicate CSR via their websites, even though there is much potential for stakeholder involvement.