CSR reporting in tourism: the case of the Greek hospitality industry

Sustainable tourism is a policy target for both the United Nations and the European Union and Greece has set ambitious sustainability targets for its tourism sector. The aim of this study is to investigate whether Greek hotels have embraced sustainability reporting and follow international trends, particularly with regard to the use of GRI standards as the most widely used international standard. We investigate four- and five-star hotels websites along with the GRI database and employ content analysis to assess the quality of the reports. Our findings suggest that Greek hotels follow the same pattern with hotels worldwide and remain at lower level in CSR reporting, both in terms of quantity and quality. Despite the importance of tourism for Greece, there are limited studies on CSR in the Greek hospitality sector and there is no prior study on CSR reporting of Greek hotels.