Chapter 14: Corporate Social Responsibility in Tourism: Past and Present Scholar’s Contributions

Tourism involves a significant number of people that every year travel all over the world. Because of this, it is undeniable that, as well as other industries, it has its impact on the natural environment, as well as on the economic, social and cultural dimensions of communities. This impact has to be seen in both positive and negative sense. On one hand, tourism constitutes an important source of revenues for the economy of both developed and developing countries (Belisle & Hoy, 1980; Tosun, 2002). On the other hand, its rapid growth and its big dimension have conducted to endanger the same resource on which it relies on (Henderson, 2007). Therefore, travel related organizations should commit themselves to the principles of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (Chou, 2014; Henderson, 2007; Inoue & Lee, 2011). These may constitute a tool to manage the dual nature of tourism (Budeanu, 2005) and the trade-off between the need for it in certain areas of the world and the damages that uncontrolled and non-responsible tourism policies may cause to the destinations.