A comparison case study of an international and a local 5-star hotels’ CSR initiatives in Boracay against the community perspectives.

Abstract

The popularity of Boracay as a tourism destination in The Philippines since the late 1970s has impacted the island in terms of environment, social problems. Since then, many community stakeholders, including the government, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and hoteliers have been actively contributing resources and effort to conserve and remedy issues on the island that were brought about by the advent of tourism. This research focuses on Boracay and how the CSR initiatives of two five-star hotels, namely Shangri-La and Discovery Shores, impact the local community. With interviews conducted to obtain perspectives from the community, NGOs as well as hotels, the level of alignment in terms of expectations between the community and the hotels are highlighted and analysed within a framework that fuses Carroll’s Pyramid of CSR (Carroll, 1991) and Stakeholder Theory (Freeman, 1984). On top of that, the differences and similarities between the two hotels are identified, with their respective implications for CSR implementation.