Seminar highlights growing awareness of CSR in the tourism sector

In his welcome address, Buamim spoke in length about Dubai Chamber's role in encouraging CSR practices and the different CSR initiatives rolled out by the Chamber.

"At Dubai Chamber, we believe that CSR is a proven business strategy that helps companies capture several business benefits like enhanced reputation, customer satisfaction, employee loyalty, better corporate governance and better risk management and in order to change business culture, we have to highlight positive role models for the business community. More and more organizations will follow the example of leading companies and today's best practices will become tomorrow's standard approaches," said Buamim.

"Our work focuses on raising the bar for business performance, providing capacity building tools and celebrating Dubai's leading companies. This year we have introduced CSR as a new category for the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Business Awards' fourth cycle to recognize industry CSR leaders besides the launching a Leadership series on Corporate Social Responsibility for business leaders providing interaction and networking opportunities for heads of companies to discuss various issues in the area of CSR. We also organised a workshop in collaboration with the Global Reporting Initiative on non-financial reporting in Dubai, in addition to conducting studies and training sessions on the corporate social responsibility of enterprises," he said.

Buamim explained that tourism in Dubai is emerging as a strategic sector contributing towards economic stability and employment.

At the same time this sector has major environmental, social and economic impacts and affects the culture and well being of the population.

"We have conducted a survey on CSR in the Tourism industry, and we are happy to report that many companies in the tourism & hospitality industry have demonstrated responsible business practices which prove the growing awareness of CSR in this sector, still we believe that there is bigger room for improvement," said Buamim.

Shaikha Al Mutawa, Deputy Director, Business Development, Department for Tourism & Commerce Marketing spoke about the DTCM's mission and vision and the various responsible practices that were being introduced by the Department to encourage CSR in the tourism industry.

Ms Mutawa also spoke in length about the Initiative from DTCM as one of its Corporate Social Responsibilities to reduce 20% Carbon emissions within the hospitality sector by 2011.

Laurence Arca Bathe, Jumeirah Group, Suhaila Gobash, Dubai Shopping Festival Office and Sylvester Barretto, Marriott Business Council spoke about the various impact areas for their business and current best practices being undertaken to reduce their social and environmental impact as a business.

The discussion following the presentations focused on exploring issues and solutions to achieving environmental, social and economic sustainability in this sector.

CSR is increasingly recognized as an imperative for business success; therefore, CRB offers a variety of educational, professional training and consulting services that are designed to build individual companies' capacity to implement broad CSR programmes including business ethics, sustainability reporting and corporate governance.

CRB's work fosters a favourable business environment that values transparency, accountability and the rule of law.