Modern Slavery Statements and Leading UK Hotel Companies

Abstract

Modern slavery is an insidious problem in many sectors of the global economy, and it is widely perceived to be commonplace in the hospitality industry. However modern slavery has received little attention in the academic hospitality literature and this paper looks to explore one of the ways in which leading hotel companies in the UK have publicly addressed the issue by reviewing their modern slavery statements. The paper adopts a simple methodological approach to review, and offer some reflections on, the modern slavery statements of seven of the leading hotel companies within the UK. The findings revealed that six interlinked themes, namely corporate commitment; risk areas; due diligence; awareness and training; audit; and performance measures; illustrated the seven companies’ approach to tackling modern slavery. The authors also suggested that the hotel companies’ approaches to modern slavery were expectational and that there were concerns about the scope of the auditing processes employed by the hotel companies and by the limited public reporting of their attempts to tackle modern slavery as part of their approach to corporate social responsibility. Keywords: modern slavery, modern slavery statements, UK hotel industry, hospitality industry, auditing, corporate social responsibility