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Within hospitality research, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has attracted plenty of interest, but few studies have investigated a strategic approach to CSR management. Strategic CSR assumes that by systematic investment in responsibility that matches customer demand, a business can earn additional profit while fulfilling societal expectations. However, the details of how such systematic management can be achieved are missing. This leaves the business case for customer-focused, strategic CSR largely conceptual, and offers little advice to hospitality managers wishing to pursue such a strategy. To fill these gaps, our study investigated guest willingness to pay for initiatives that were selected based on a model of strategic CSR management that incorporates key aspects of customer behavior. The results provide empirical evidence on how strategic CSR management can contribute to financial performance and support the need for understanding the guest comprehensively during the strategy development process to achieve the gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customers and society increasingly expect purpose from businesses, and the prevalent corporate social responsibility (CSR) approaches do not adequately respond to this demand. To address the situation, we conceptualize Ethically Meaningful Customer Experiences (EMCE) as a new type of customer-oriented responsibility that synthesizes the experience economy and CSR. EMCEs, unlike previous approaches, circumvent implicit or explicit expectation of sacrifice by transforming it into an ethical activity that customers enjoy. We analyze the differences between earlier approaches and our development and provide emerging industry examples that align with the new concept. In synthesizing ethical consumption and the experience economy, EMCEs contribute a new theoretical path to understanding CSR that builds on the role of experience as a fundamental tourism and hospitality industry element and, consequently, develops an approach endogenous to the industry. The concept also contributes to customer experience design by incorporating ethics as a new experience component. We argue that EMCEs allow hotels and resorts to respond to an emerging customer desire for purpose while also addressing concerns related to the societal role of the tourism and hospitality industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the significance of transformation and the conceptualization of experiences that incorporate corporate social responsibility in their design to satisfy customers, this paper develops the concept of ethically transformative experiences and their consequences in commercial hotels. We define such experiences as occurrences that trigger outward-directed, lasting changes in a customer, manifested as future responsible consumption choices. We propose a design framework for such experiences and argue that hospitality and tourism organizations, with the micro-environment of a hotel as an example, are well positioned to design ethically transformative experiences. The outcome, a responsible consumer, amounts to a public good, providing a potential path for businesses to attain societal purpose and demonstrating connections between micro and macro-levels of transformation. • We conceptualize ethically transformative experiences in hotels. • The experiences synthesize corporate social responsibility with transformation. • They offer a pathway for service organizations to become transformative. • We propose a design framework for ethical experiences in hotels. • Society benefits as transformed guests start to choose responsible consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]