Responsible tourism employment issues

tourism employment low pay
How much fun are holidays for staff on very low pay?

Responsible Tourism is about the triple bottom line, economic, social and environment. At WTM in November we have panels on child protection, tourism for people with disabilities; and maximising local economic development. This week the issue of low pay for those in hospitality and tourism employment has been raised in London, in three different ways. There was a Channel 4 programme on What Happens in Kavos,which revealed what the holiday reps earn, and quite a lot about their working conditions.

Some will dismiss it as sensationalist, but the issue is being raised for tour operators as it was for the cruise industry in the Dispatches programme on labour conditions back in October 2012.  The “world’s biggest industry” needs to respond and to be able to demonstrate that there are lots of good jobs in travel and tourism. The issue is not going to go away.

staff wanted anti slavery hospitalityIn Westminster on Wednesday night there was Parliamentary reception on tourism employment issues on “Preventing the Exploitation of Staff in UK Hotels” organised by Anti-Slavery International and the Institute for Human Rights and Business. Their Staff Wanted Initiative is gathering weight.

A cursory look on the web reveals that there are major issues around the terms and conditions of employees in the travel and tourism industry in many developing and developed country destinations around the world. Tourism Concern ran their Sun Sand Sea and Sweatshops .

tourism employment issuesBut the issue about low wages is not only being raised by trade unionists. Ferdinand Mount is an Old Etonian and he was head of the Downing Street Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher. Writing in the Evening Standard last Monday, Mount argues that companies, not the state, must now top up low wages.

This is obviously not only an issue for hotels and the travel and tourism industry – but the issue is not going to go away. Mount quotes the Jospeh Rowntree Foundation Research which reports that in the UK about 7 million working people are on some form of benefit, these are not scroungers on benefit about which we hear a great deal in the press. These are working people in low paid work. They are also employees being subsidised to work for employers who either cannot, or choose not, to pay a living wage. As Mount writes:

“Should the state top up the wages of low-paid workers? Almost overnight, this seems to have become a pressing question. There has even been a new word coined for it: “wob” or “workers on benefit”. The crude argument between “shirkers” and “strivers” is beginning to look secondary to the far costlier question: how much longer can the nation afford to spend so many billions on tax credits?”

However you choose to see the issue of tourism and employment, it is an issue which is not going to go away. The industry needs to think about how it is going to respond. Where do you think its responsibility lies?

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Harold is WTM’s Responsible Tourism Advisor, he puts together the flagship Responsible Tourism programme at WTM London which attracted 4000 participants in 2020 and the programmes run at WTM Africa, WTM Latin America and Arabian Travel Market. Harold has worked on 4 continents with local communities, their governments and the inbound and outbound tourism industry. He is Managing Director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership and chairs the panels of judges for the World Responsible Tourism Awards and the other Awards in the family, Africa, India and Latin America. Harold works with industry, local communities, governments, and conservationists and undertakes consultancy and evaluations for companies, NGOs, governments, and international organisations. He is also a Director of the Institute of Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he is an Emeritus Professor, and Founder Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism promotes the principles of the Cape Town Declaration which he drafted.

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