Article: Tourism Center Promotes Community Involvement
Tourism Center Promotes Community Involvement
September 17, 2009, State Press, By Michelle Parks
Through an ongoing partnership with Clark University’s George Perkins Marsh Institute, officials from ASU’s Megapolitan Tourism Research Center said they hope to develop a social responsibility program for the tourism industry.
The program is aimed at providing recognition to businesses within the industry for their efforts in community responsibility, director of the center Tim Tyrrell said.
“Local businesses, in our case tourism [businesses], do a lot for the community that goes unrecognized,” Tyrrell said.
Over the past spring and summer months, the research center composed surveys that it hopes will provide information about what shared values community members have.
The research center hopes to apply the information found in the survey to the tourism industry and rank different businesses according to the values shared by members of the community.
Tyrrell said the center hopes to conduct the survey this fall, though an exact date has not been set.
From this ranking system, Tyrrell said one of the program’s aims is to establish a “Social Responsibility Seal” that recognizes each business’ community involvement.
“It’s something to recognize these businesses and indicate them as being more responsible,” he said.
Southwest Airlines spokesman Paul Flaningan praised the universities’ efforts toward holding the tourism industry to standards of community responsibility.
Flaningan said Southwest Airlines recognizes the importance of community responsibility and has made community involvement part of the company’s internal culture.
“We are totally behind [the universities] in their efforts to make a positive difference in the community they live in,” he said.
Tyrrell said that in addition to a class of undergraduates creating the survey, a class of graduate students worked to design site assessments for the hotel industry last spring.
After the results of the survey have been compiled, a workshop for local businesses will be held in the spring of 2010.
The workshop will allow local businesses to compare their own business to the results of the surveys detailing what members of the community said they value most.
It will compare the results of the survey with assessments of the businesses themselves to determine how effective the company’s efforts have been in the community.
Flaningan commended the student leaders in the project.
“With a university, you get a younger prospective, and a lot of energy and [Southwest Airlines] can build on that energy,” he said.
“These younger students are really in tune with what’s important as far as social responsibility and realize the needs of the community better than corporate America [does] sometimes.”
