Bioeconomy and social responsibility in the sustainable hotel industry

The aim of this article is to investigate strategies and practices of bioeconomy implemented by hotels in Romania in the context of increasing area and scale of corporate social responsibility initiatives worldwide. After presenting the conceptual framework necessary for the present investigation and selecting the most relevant papers from the literature, the research focuses on Romania's experience through: statistical analyzes, the investigation of hotel websites regarding social responsibility and bioeconomy practices and a semi-quantitative study having as a research tool the individual semi-structured interview with hotels representatives. The Romanian market underscores relevant contrasts between four and five star hotels and the others categories. Hotels in the first category, often belonging to international chains, benefit from the strategies of sustainable development and social responsibility within the group, in contrast with other hotels. The investigation concludes that, as long as social responsibility continues to have a voluntary character, there will be a limited number of best practices as regards developing bioeconomy in the Romanian hotel industry. Consequently, we propose the introduction of legislative measures to stimulate all companies, regardless of size, to report non-financial information, as well as raising awareness and education in the direction of promoting the bioeconomy.