The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated systemic weaknesses, inequalities, and unacceptable practices throughout global value chains in many industries, as well as in the tourism industry. If we would like to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals United Nations agenda by 2030, it is required to ensure commitments and management systems are in place to support businesses to deliver on their respective social and environmental challenges.
The Hospitality industry has enormous opportunities to advocate for human rights and contribute to the sustainable development goals associated with social wellbeing. From the investors' activism and long-term perspective, it can create benefits in society and positive impacts to the different stakeholders. The regulation on sustainability disclosure in the financial services sector (SFDR) came into force in March 2021. SFDR explicitly mentions respect for human rights as part of the 'sustainability factors' financial institutions must report on, further increasing the pressure for companies and stakeholder businesses to address the "S" in ESG.
The Modern Slavery Act is a globally leading piece of legislation. It sets out a range of measures on how modern slavery and human trafficking should be dealt with in the United Kingdom. The Act is embedded in business operations, reporting, including education to internal and external business stakeholders, having KPIs and monitoring, and assessing operations and supply chain.
Audit all the hotel or hotel group stakeholders and business processes to ensure human rights, from living wage to diversity and inclusion policy, as a priority in corporate governance. Human rights due diligence, despite being so crucial for the effective management of human rights risks, remains an area of poor performance across all tourism sub-sectors.
Better planning and understanding of how the hotel or the group impacts and manages its governance is fundamental to dealing with human rights issues. It will allow hospitality businesses to improve accountability, disclosure of practices and policies, and improve challenges in their respective non-financial reporting.
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