Samenvatting

Green Life Volunteers is a local volunteer organization in Puerto Jimenez. Green Life Volunteers has also a non-profit status in Costa Rica. Green Life Volunteers offers local volunteer projects in Costa Rica focused on helping the local community, nature, environment and animals. The volunteer organization opened only a few years ago, however the owner Janina Schan wants the organization to grow.
The purpose of this research is to reveal the opinions and believes of tourism organizations on corporate social responsibility and the possibility of collaborating with a volunteer or non-profit organization. Therefore, the following main question was developed for this research: ‘How can Green Life Volunteers react to the corporate social responsibility trends and developments from tourism organizations to grow as an organization?’. To answer the main questions, the following sub questions were established:
How do tourism organizations perceive the importance of corporate social responsibility?
How do tourism organizations perform corporate social responsibility practices?
How do tourism organizations perceive a collaboration with a volunteer organization?
Which associations does Green Life Volunteers need for a collaboration with tourism organizations?
To receive the answers on the research questions, and therefore to gain insights on the believes and opinions of tourism organizations, several tourism organizations in Costa Rica have been interviewed. This qualitative method have been chosen to gain more in-depth information. There has also been chosen for semi-structured interviews to receive more insights on corporate social responsibility and the possibility of collaboration between tourism organizations and volunteer or non-profit organizations.
According to the results of the interviews, the tourism organizations of Costa Rica find corporate social responsibility important for several reasons. The main reason is because the tourism organizations feel obligated to help and protect the local community, nature, environment and animals. Most tourism organizations practice already corporate social responsibility practices, however they are not aware they practice such practices. They want to have corporate social responsibility practices because they benefit from the resources. However not all organizations know how to be corporate social responsible. The tourism organizations also want to collaborate with volunteer or non-profit organizations to help the community, environment and animals. But on the other hand, they also want to collaborate with such organizations to receive benefits for their own organizations. Lastly, the tourism organizations find it also important the volunteer or non-profit organization is associated with transparent, honest and organized.
Based on the results of this research, several recommendations are established for Green Life Volunteers. The first recommendation is future research, establishing a brand plan, to improve the organization, offer community based projects, approach tourism organizations for a collaboration and to offer short term volunteering.