Work Life Balance for Sustainable Tourism Development

The tourism and hospitality industry is very much a ‘people industry’, which requires a stable and talented workforce as a fundamental component. However, there are some aspects of the industry that make it unattractive to potential employees. These aspects include the long and unsocial hours of work, the low pay and often stressful working environment (Deery and Jago, 2015: Karatepe, 2013). These aspects contribute to the industry’s reputation for not providing staff with an acceptable work-life balance. The question then becomes how the tourism and hospitality industry can contribute to a better balance and thus underpin the socio-cultural aspects of sustainability. This study examines the sustainability of the industry across three countries, Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand, by focusing on whether tourism employees in hospitality organisations consider they have a balance between their personal and work lives. Hospitality is chosen as the focus for this study since it plays a fundamentally important role in underpinning the viability of the broader tourism industry. Current practices are confronted by larger societal changes in the labour market, where lifelong careers within the same firm (or industry) are challenged by rapid employee turnover, demands for greater flexibility, new technologies, and alternative work schedules. We discuss how collaboration between industry, employees and wider community may help underpin sustainable tourism development.

Suppliers as Key Collaborators for Sustainable Tourism Development

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a conceptual approach to understanding driving forces for innovation in sustainable tourism development. The model underpins the fact that innovation in tourism is not solely the effect of a strategic and wilful internal action in tourism firms and organisations, but also the consequences of external driving forces. Further, the article offers a more detailed review of the importance of suppliers as (one of several) push factors for sustainable tourism development. Examples are provided, and possibilities and limitations in terms of a rapid development of more sustainable practices in tourism are discussed. A four-field model aims at stimulating the search for new forms of collaboration between tourism firms and their suppliers in the upstream supply chain, and it adds dimensions to the traditional perspectives on value chains in tourism.

Reflections on Research Paradigms

The journey of Collaboration for Sustainable Tourism Development has aimed high by keeping heads in the clouds and feet on the ground, to visit critical and optimistic possibilities for what sustainable tourism development was, is, and may become. This chapter gives substance to the potential of collaboration for sustainable tourism development by indicating the significance of imagina- tion. Envisaging tourism futures implies that tourism researchers, students, practitioners, policy makers – all stakeholders – engender other kinds of relationships, interactions and conversations to imagine what could be. It is a feasible process of designing with as an ethical, ongoing involvement of others through a respect for their ways of being in the world, their sense of values and aspirations for better tourism futures in a better world. In this chapter, we do so by leveraging the variations of interpretation represented in the making of this book and the previous fourteen chapters. This book encompasses philosophical, conceptual and empirical research to expose conditions, empirical circumstances and underpinning values. The contributions meet in the application of the concept of collaboration to uncover what sustainable tourism development was, and presently is, and signposts how unknown futures can be imagined. Imagining collaborative tourism futures is predicated on epistemological and mutually shared responsibilities. These obligations cannot alone be captured by academics engaged in a persistent quest for knowledge, critical dialogue and thinking tourism into the future. Responsibilities are intimately connected to a holistic understanding of collaborative engagements with the wider world in shaping desirable futures. Imaginations of collaborative tourism futures are a response to current limitations of sustainable tourism development, where we charter the contours of tourism futures to tackle wider societal problems.

Collaborative Learning for Sustainable Tourism Development

Tourism is a global social and economic phenomenon, which calls for a holistic approach to tourism higher education, where the broader aims of the industry and society are explicitly addressed. The indispensable complexity of the tourism phenomenon demands professionals with a far-reaching and integrated understanding of the multiple disciplines and paradigms that are concerned with sustainable tourism development and adaptive management. Rather than resting on predefined learning outcomes, where students simply acquire knowledge about sustainable tourism development, this chapter unfolds the processes of how complex and critical understandings of sustainable tourism development are collaboratively designed with students, tutors and teachers.

The Responsibility of Corporations for Sustainable Tourism Development

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an understanding of the principles and practices of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and to discuss how the concept of collaboration can facilitate the implementation of CSR strategies and operations. Increasing numbers of tourism companies are incorporating the concept of CSR in their business models, to improve the environment, the quality of life of local communities and the welfare of their employees. The chapter first illustrates and discusses the principles of CSR, and identifies the key benefits of incorporating CSR such as efficiencies, improved stakeholder relationships and enhanced profitability. Next, the chapter highlights the necessary changes in organisational attitudes and behaviour needed to underpin the implementation of CSR. Finally, it identifies the roles of internal and external stakeholders and suggests how collaboration among stakeholders can contribute to positive societal change.

Whose Needs and What is to be Sustained

This chapter explores sustainable tourism development and collaboration in relation to the needs of tourists and of host communities. It is a collaboration of two academics operating in parallel, although occasionally intersecting, fields of study: tourism, and sustainability assessment. Through combining our knowledge and pursuits in each field, we work towards a shared goal that hopefully transcends what could be accomplished alone. Our approach is to explore the notion of human needs as it is expressed in the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987) definition of sustainable development and the UN World Tourism Organisation (WTO) appropriation of the definition for sustainable tourism development. Our starting point is thus to unpack the key terms employed in these definitions prior to drilling down more specifically into analysing needs in the context of sustain able tourism development and collaboration. In so doing, many inter-related facets of sustainability thinking and of tourism understanding are revealed. Our method is principally a literature review amounting to a theoretical exploration of concepts, illustrated with published examples from practice. Our analysis leads us to propose an alternative definition of sustainable tourism development that emphasises the priority of ‘host community’ needs that better aligns with the spirit of the WCED definition.

Co branding and Strategic Communication

By means of collaboration, the sum of the work becomes more than its indi- vidual parts (Liburd, 2013). This also goes for communication about sustain- able tourism development, where meanings created on the basis of the sum of communication exceed the meanings introduced by individual communicators’ messages. This chapter introduces the notion of sustainable tourism develop- ment communication and discourses as complex and dynamic meaning-making processes that transcend what individual actors bring to the conversation, thus emphasizing such discourses as informed and co-constructed by the plethora of actors that communicate about this issue. Hereby, communication becomes more than a matter of giving or sending information; it becomes an issue of shar- ing information and by doing so, creating and advancing knowledge through collaborative meaning-making processes.

Understanding Collaboration and Sustainable Tourism Development

This chapter will provide conceptual clarifications of collaboration and sustainable development, and their application to tourism. Collaboration is not new in the contexts of tourism research, tourism higher education or the tourism industry. Academic life thrives on selection, classification and informed judgement, which are not at odds with collaboration. Without argument and counterargument, knowledge cannot be advanced. Tourism destinations are made up of many industry actors and stakeholders who are engaged in a myriad of networks and collaborative efforts. Tourists readily choose between destinations in a globally competitive field. Many travel to over-crowded destinations, where the tourism sector drives the destination to accommodate its demands, which may be at odds with sustainably living within the needs and wants of the destination and its local inhabitants. This chapter will attempt to overcome the all too frequent gap between sustainability in tourism theory and practice, by focusing on collaborative dimensions and possible critical engagements. The overall objective is to add three aspects to the current literature and appreciative understanding of the importance of collaboration for sustainable tourism development.

Imagining Collaborative Tourism Futures

Wicked problems of the world—poverty, health and wellbeing, equality, climate change, refugee crises, sustainability, ... ; continue to challenge humankind. Despite decades of collaborations, partnerships, policies and research, these wicked problems remain primarily unresolved and manifold. This is not unexpected as this is inherent in the nature of wicked problems. As Horst Rittel (1967 in Churchman, 1967) and Rittel and Webber (1973) noted, wicked problems are marked by the inability to provide a universal solution and a universal research approach. Instead the problems are context specific and continually transmogrify – there is no end point. In addition, they can overlap, interrelate, interconnect and intersect. In framing the nature of a wicked problem, the knowledge sets and experiences, social situatedness, respective insider- or outsider-ness and worldviews of the various stakeholders involved play critical roles with regard to how the problem is addressed. They inform and shape what is given attention and why; what is included or excluded and why; as well as the methodologies and methods used. Every attempt to address a wicked problem leaves a legacy including repercussions and unintended consequences. There is no undoing of actions. As four of the manifold stakeholders concerned with wicked problems, researchers, planners, designers and practitioners have the task of “improv[ing] some [of the] characteristics of the world where people live ...” (Rittel & Webber, 1973:167). These four stakeholders, like all stakeholders, are responsible for the consequences of their actions and ongoing ramifications associated with the redress of wicked problems. Unlike traditional “scientized” (Xiang, 2013: 2) linear approaches used to address solvable, or ‘tame’, problems; non-linear, social process-based problem-solving approaches are required for wicked problems. Rather than outcomes being supported/not supported or validated/not validated in the case of tame problems, strategies used to address wicked problems are usually evaluated using criteria, such as “better or worse”, and are always influenced by stakeholder viewpoints (Rittel & Webber, 1973:163). As a consequence of the nature of wicked problems, there is no ‘quick fix’ or easy way to address these ‘malignant’, ‘vicious’, ‘tricky’, ‘aggressive’ – wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973:160).

A Case Study in Collaborative Supplier Partnerships

Globally there are hundreds of convention centres, which host more than 24,000 different association meetings each year (International Congress and Convention Association, 2016). Unlike the hotel sector (Bohdanowicz-Godfrey, 2013) and tourism operations sector (Carlsen & Edwards, 2013a) which have documented “practices towards more sustainable modes of operation” (Carlsen & Edwards, 2013a: 33), little has been documented in the research literature about the collaborative potentials of a convention centre to deliver benefits beyond tourist visitation (Edwards et al., 2014; Mair & Jago, 2010). This case study makes a contribution to this research gap by examining a convention centre, International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney), with significant purchasing power to work with and influence suppliers in a backward supply chain. ICC Sydney’s Feeding Your Performance (FYP) initiative encourages environmentally sustainable behaviour as part of its organisational practices and supports and collaborates with a range of suppliers who are working to improve the agricultural ecosystems in their farming areas. Ecosystem is defined as “the minimum aggregated set of processes (including biochemical, biophysical and biological ones) that ensure the biological productivity, organisational integrity and perpetuation of the ecosystem” (Swift et al., 2004:115).