This sector report aims at helping policy makers, mainstream and
specialist SRI investors, pension fund trustees, and companies
understand risks that are not consistently integrated into
traditional financial analysis, but which have the potential to
influence companies’ shareholder value and fund managers’ investment
decisions. It describes the companies’ impacts on the environment and
society, discusses the opportunities and risks such issues present
and outlines ways in which companies can address them.
Eurosif and Vigeo worked with a Steering Committee made up of asset
managers Banco Fonder and Insight Investment, as well as WWF – Italy
to debate the issues in the report and develop a way to present both
the stakeholder and financial points of view.
“We feel this sector report provides an essential understanding of
both where the social and environmental issues stem from, as well as
how they may affect investors in the hotel and tourism industry”,
says Sylvain Guyoton, head of SRI Research Operations at Vigeo.
Eurosif and Vigeo have highlighted six main potential risks for the
hotel and tourism sector: Climate Change, Environmental degradation,
Labour standards and working conditions, Human rights and corruption,
Local community investment and Safety and security threats.
Rachel Crossley from Insight Investment commented, “This report
succinctly outlines the key social, ethical and environmental risks
that we believe investors and companies should be taking a closer
look at. Mismanagement of these risks – or conversely, failure to
capitalise on opportunities – has the potential to affect companies’
reputations and their financial performance.”
This report is the first in a series of sector reports Eurosif is
producing this year. The second one, due out in July, will
concentrate on chemicals and the third, due out in September will
focus on automobiles. Eurosif will work with the research agency
EIRIS (Ethical Investment Research Service) for the chemical sector
and SAM (Sustainable Asset Management) for the automobile study.
“We are pleased to be able to use this series of sector reports as a
way to bring together our members’ expertise to illustrate the
importance of these issues to European policy makers and mainstream
financial services providers” says Matt Christensen, Eurosif’s
Executive Director.