Sustainable development and stakeholder relations management: Exploring sustainability reporting in the hospitality industry from a SD-SRM approach

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the sustainability reporting of 170 hospitality companies from a SD-SRM approach.The purpose of the study is to ascertain the information that companies disclose in accordance with thesustainable development (SD) and the stakeholder relations management (SRM) theories and to identifythe areas for improvement in the management and reporting practices of sustainability in the hospi-tality industry. The authors use the content analysis method to identify and describe the sustainabilityreporting of hotel chains and independently managed hotels in Spain. The findings show that the sustaina-bility information reported by hospitality companies currently meets the basic principles of a SD-SRMapproach. Nonetheless, the authors also identify areas for improvement, such as the orientation of thereporting to suppliers or the more equilibrated distribution of information among all corporate stake-holders. Based on these findings, the authors consider that the integration of information following theSD-SRM approach described in this paper could facilitate a better compliance of hospitality companieswith the principles of the SD and SRM theories