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The CSR practices of the last five companies out of the eight that took part in the study: Courtyard Hotel Livingstone (CHL), Chapa Classics Lodge (CCL), Chanters Lodge Livingstone (CLL), Mosi-oa-tunya Executive Lodge (MEL) and Jollyboys Backpackers Lodge (JBL), have been presented together in one section because their CSR practices are simplistic in type and approach and they do not involve communities in their CSR decision making processes.

For example, all the five companies have not yet formalised their CSR/CSI programmes and their main CSR support-line to communities is through simple (tokenistic) donations and provision of low value opportunities for community benefits (see below). This implies that there is little or no close interaction with the communities. The managers of these businesses, especially locally owned ones, cited the high cost of doing business, linked to high taxes and cumbersome licensing procedures, as the main reasons for not doing more in terms of CSR. The concerns of these five managers suggest that the tourism policy framework has generally undermined the promotion of the CSR in the area.

The common characteristic among these five companies is that they all did not have a systematic pattern of allocating funds to their CSR initiatives, but used an open-door policy. This is a situation where managers mostly respond to community requests for assistance in an ad hoc fashion. In addition, they also do not generate annual reports and

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have very scanty information on their websites about CSR, except tag-lines that encourage responsible tourism such as “let your holiday leave a positive impact on the communities you choose to visit - environmentally, socially and economically”19 and blogs on tourist volunteering activities and experiences around communities in Mukuni20. These companies mainly engage in tokenistic CSR initiatives and approaches (donations, local employment and packaged village tours). The exceptions in this case were Chapa Classics Lodge (CCL) and Jollyboys Backpackers Lodge (JBL) whose CSR practices went a bit beyond tokenism. These two companies have made some successful trials by offering education scholarships and trying out the viability of homestay experience trips respectively. In this regard, CCL has made attempts to offer education scholarships as a trial to three orphaned children in Mukuni communities. At the time of the research, the company had successfully sponsored these three orphans through to university (2) and college (1). This result has been very positive and encouraging to the company as expressed by the manager in the following statement:

“…We ran a trial scholarship programme for 3 orphans from the community… the 3 have finished college and university and are now independent. We are excited with the outcome…we plan to roll out the programme to more orphans in the community…” (CCLmger, 17th August, 2014).

Similarly, JBL is doing village “homestay” experiences as a trial run in one of the communities in the area. The manager enthusiastically explained that village homestay trips provide opportunities for its guests to experience a traditional lifestyle in a Zambian village. According to the manager, the trips have been very successful and have become popular among student guests. This initiative involves taking a trip to a nearby community (about 30km) where interested guests stay with a particular household in the village at a fee for a night or more. The manager explained as follows:

“…Jollyboys works with one of the neighbouring communities to provide a traditional life experience to our guests…that is, the lodge organises “home stay” trips for the guests into Simonga village for a night or more…the way this is structured is that part of the money paid to the village goes to the village development fund and part of it goes to the

19_{http://www.backpackzambia.com/responsible.php} 20_{http://www.chanters-livingstone.com/lodge-blog/}

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family that hosted the guests…in this way the lodge is creating extra sources of income for the community and its households…” (JBLmger, 17th August, 2014).

The manager stated that the lodge does not take a commission from what it charges its guests for homestays. However, she acknowledged that the lodge has benefited in business terms from longer guest stays and from repeated visits as expressed in her remarks below:

“…the lodge now has long term relationships with overseas school volunteer groups who have been on homestay trips and want to continue to help households in this community. Most of these groups are part of our return guests …some of these volunteer groups are even helping the lodge to achieve its goals of helping surrounding communities through donations, labour and overseas fundraising for our CSR initiatives…” (JBLmger, 17thAugust, 2014).

These comments were confirmed by a leader of one of the groups that was at the lodge at the time of this research – that is, the chairman of the ITALA Foundation21registered in the UK. He disclosed that every year he brings a group of up to 25 students and adults who stay at JBL and often participate in “village experience” trips. He made the following statement that:

“…14 years ago, I brought a group of students to Zambia from the school I used to teach at in South Wales to go bush tramping…as a result of this trip, later we began to fund a school project in Mkushi District of Zambia. Now we have a big school with 3 main buildings and over 800 students… we also registered a charity in the UK, called ITALA Foundation…So, each year I bring out students from the UK and we go out to spend a week there painting, teaching, playing with the kids and just interacting with children. At the end of that week we come here [at Jollyboys Lodge] …we participate in many activities…so far, I have made several return visits to the lodge with volunteer, school and adult groups for nearly 14 years…” (Trust Chairman- ITALA Foundation, 17thJuly, 2014).

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A careful examination of these comments shows that there is a connection between the support and benefits to the community and business benefits for the company. This idea of mutual benefits from CSR for both the company and the community appears to be uniquely possible in the tourism industry. Thus, there could be ground for linking tourism business interests with community development through CSR to achieve better and sustainable outcomes for both (Ashley & Haysom, 2005, 2006).

In general terms, the five companies made varying CSR contributions to community development in the area. This contribution includes creating opportunities for jobs for people in communities. In contrast with large companies, small companies found it quite easy to quantify employees recruited from Mukuni communities (Table 13).

Table 13: Local Employment

Company Total Staff Staff originally from Mukuni communities

Staff from elsewhere

CHL 47 46 01

CCL 14 14 00

CLL 11 11 01

MEL 10 10 00

JBL 27 24 03

This disaggregation of employment data was not readily available with large companies whose managers gave excuses of the lack of it. Another CSR initiative that is common to all the five is conducting packaged village tours to Mukuni communities. As stated earlier, this activity has created opportunities for communities to generate income through increased sales of crafts and curio items to tourists. It also brings other benefits such as tourist donations to households and revenue generation for the MCDT (through fees paid by companies for village tours22). See a summary of comments from some community participants below:

“…Community benefits include fees that tourism operators pay per tourist that they bring for village tours, which is $5 per tourist per village tour, then tourists also buy crafts and curios from the local community markets, village grocery shops, and sometimes tourists also make donations to schools, clinics and to families in the village during the tour….” (CommunityGp-3, 12thAugust, 2014).

22_{The MCDT has signed agreements with respective tourism companies to pay $5 per tourist for village} tours.

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These findings show that smaller lodge companies could also progress in their CSR practices if well supported and encouraged through strategic policy actions. Although these companies have not yet started including substantial elements of community development in their business strategies, there are some indications of their readiness to shift beyond just simple donations to more substantive CSR initiatives. For example, they all expressed admiration of the CSR practices of the three large companies examined in this study. This readiness to change practices makes the need to resolve local context challenges even more paramount so that the greater impacts of CSR on community development in Mukuni becomes a reality.

The next section describes the factors that drive or motivate hotel and lodge companies in Livingstone to engage in CSR in Mukuni communities.