Corporate social marketing in tourism: to sleep or not to sleep with the enemy?
ABSTRACT Social marketing is regarded as an effective consumer oriented approach to promoting behavioural change and improved well being for individuals, communities and society. However, its potential for tourism, especially sustainable tourism, remains under researched. This article examines the utilisation of social marketing by tourism businesses. A search strategy identified 14 behavioural change programmes that involved tourism businesses. Half of these programmes label themselves social marketing; the others tend to be part of corporate social responsibility efforts, using a form of corporate social marketing (CSM) Most programmes seek to encourage pro environmental behaviours in tourists, tourism businesses and other stakeholders including suppliers. Although tourism businesses can develop social marketing programmes alone, typically they collaborate with public and non profit agencies as partners and sponsors. The strength of the tie between the promoted behaviour and the sale of a company's product varies considerably. It is suggested that social marketing can make significant contributions to environmentally sustainable tourism. However, this research also suggests that social marketing is not a substitute for, but rather an essential complement to, technological and regulatory approaches to climate change. Changing behaviour is a long process: without a long term commitment from private sector companies, CSM programmes will fail to achieve behavioural change goals.