Wasn’t me! Defining tourism sub-sector responsibilities for EU ESG reporting
How can the European Union’s (EU) travel and hospitality sectors establish clear responsibility boundaries while ensuring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) accountability across the entire tourism value chain?
Robin Boustead shares his first “Good Tourism” Insight.
[You too can write a “GT” Insight.]
- Looming deadlines, fines, (prison?)
- Defining responsibility boundaries
- Ensuring ESG accountability across the value chain
- Balancing responsibility and accountability
- Ultimate goal
- What do you think?
- About the author
Looming deadlines, fines, (prison?)
We are rapidly approaching the end of the first year of data gathering for companies who must submit ESG statements in 2025. In January 2025, analysis and critical decision making will ripple through large companies across Europe, including those in travel and hospitality.
For the last few months, I have had an almost constant flow of questions from sustainability and ESG professionals largely focused on two issues:
- How to set impact boundaries; and
- The ideal complexity of scenario analysis.
The travel sector plays a pivotal role in shaping sustainable practices given its profound influence on local economies, communities, and ecosystems. There are many negative and positive impacts created by a highly complex industry of countless SMEs through to very large businesses. Establishing clear responsibility boundaries when identifying impacts, which are likely shared with other system actors, is both vital and complicated.
European regulations have “raised the ante by introducing potential fines and even prison time for directors”
Recent regulation of ESG reporting in Europe through the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has raised the ante by introducing potential fines and even prison time for directors if reports are considered to be deliberately inaccurate or misleading. No wonder then that there is a great deal of anxiety and high expectation from the first release of ESG statements at the end of Q1 2025.
