Luxury Hotels’ Corporate Social Responsibility Communications and Online Brand Communities

The purpose of this chapter is to explore luxury hotel corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications on online brand communities (OBCs) in social media and the level of consumer engagement with CSR communications. The study follows a CSR framework proposed by (Cherapanukorn and Focken, Asian Social Science 10:198–209, 2014) to evaluate the CSR communications of five luxury hotel brands in Scotland. The four dimensions of the CSR framework are environment, community, employees and supply chain. The study conducted content analysis of 515 Facebook posts from 1 January to 31 December 2023. The results show that luxury hotel CSR communications were evident on OBCs in social media albeit minimal. This finding may suggest that hotel-hosted OBCs may not be a primary channel for communicating CSR practices in the luxury hotel sector. Moreover, the majority of the CSR communications focused on the supply chain dimension of CSR and this dimension received the highest level of consumer engagement. The environment dimension was the least frequently communicated and received the lowest level of consumer engagement; this finding may imply that luxury hotels still face challenges in effectively communicating their environmentally friendly practices while offering a high level of luxury services. The findings of the chapter illuminate the CSR communications and consumer engagement of the luxury hotel sector via the growth of OBCs in social media. The results of this chapter can be used to inform future CSR communication strategies in the luxury hotel sector.