Corporate social responsibility of hotels in Serbia as an element of total quality management

Abstract

Many companies have realized that economic and financial crisis is not a short-term phenomenon, but rather a long-term trend. This finding has caused the creation of a strategy for overcoming the difficult business conditions. In the beginning, that was the outsourcing of production and services, followed by downsizing and business processes reengineering. Since quality has emerged as a key factor for ensuring the long-term competitiveness, Total Quality Management (TQM) has become a modern system of continuous quality improvement for all company activities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the dimensions of total quality management which is increasingly gaining importance during the economic crisis when customers' trust plays an important role in making purchasing decisions. Due to complex expectations of guests, hotel companies see TQM, and especially CSR as a vital component of competitiveness. The purpose of this article is to highlight the extent of CSR use in the Serbian hotel industry as well as benefits gained by the implementation of this approach, including employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, public opinion, revenue increase, cost savings, and others.