What are the material issues the company has identified? 

In its 2019 Annual Report Rainbow Tourism Group identified a range of material issues, such as profitability, staff training, hotel waste, cyber security, safety. Among these, creating economic value for its stakeholders stands out as a key material issue for Rainbow Tourism Group.

Stakeholder engagement in accordance with the GRI Standards              

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) defines the Principle of Stakeholder Inclusiveness when identifying material issues (or a company’s most important impacts) as follows:

“The reporting organization shall identify its stakeholders, and explain how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests.”

Stakeholders must be consulted in the process of identifying a company’s most important impacts and their reasonable expectations and interests must be taken into account. This is an important cornerstone for CSR / sustainability reporting done responsibly.

Key stakeholder groups Rainbow Tourism Group engages with:

To identify and prioritise material topics Rainbow Tourism Group engaged with its stakeholders through the following channels:

Stakeholder Group	Method of engagement
Employees	·      Performance review feedback ·      Face to face communication ·      Emails ·      Internal communications ·      CEO and line manager engagements
Guests	·      Sales team engagement ·      Above the line advertising ·      Emails & In room and online feedback forms
Government and Regulators	·      Statutory returns ·      AGMs ·      Face to Face engagement with line ministries
Shareholders and Potential Investors	·      Annual Report ·      AGMs ·      Analyst Briefings
Suppliers	·      Management visits ·      Telephone ·      Emails ·      Face to face engagement
Communities	·      Focus Group meeting with communities
Media	·      Face to face engagements ·      Analyst Briefings ·      Emails and website updates
Industry	·      Face to face meetings

What actions were taken by Rainbow Tourism Group to create economic value for its stakeholders?

In its 2019 Annual Report Rainbow Tourism Group reports that it took the following actions for creating economic value for its stakeholders:

• Implementing a defined contribution pension plan
• Rainbow Tourism Group distributes economic value to its stakeholders through various ways, such as operating costs, employee costs and benefits, payments to providers of capital. More specifically, as regards employees, the Group takes cognisance of the life of employees when they retire from employment and makes sure that there are options for employees to join pension schemes. Some schemes are voluntary, while there is a mandatory National Social Security Authority scheme for all employees. Payments made towards these schemes include those made for the Employees on Group Pension, the RTG Pension Fund, the National Social Security Pension (NSSA), the Catering Industry Pension Fund (CIPF) and the Group Life Cover. During 2019, total pension contribution increased by 18% relative to Rainbow Tourism Group’s employee base.

• Paying taxes
• Rainbow Tourism Group acknowledges that taxes are key to national development and the governance systems which shape the business environment in which it operates. As such, management prioritises compliance with all applicable statutory requirements and tax planning as a responsible business. During 2019, Rainbow Tourism Group’s tax payments included payments for Value Added Tax (VAT), PAYE and Aids Levy and Withholding Tax.

Which GRI Standards and corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been addressed?

The GRI Standard addressed in this case is: Disclosure 201-1 Direct economic value generated and distributed

Disclosure 201-1 Direct economic value generated and distributed corresponds to:

• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Targets: 8.1, 8.2
• Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
• Targets: 9.1, 9.4, 9.5

 

78% of the world’s 250 largest companies report in accordance with the GRI Standards

SustainCase was primarily created to demonstrate, through case studies, the importance of dealing with a company’s most important impacts in a structured way, with use of the GRI Standards. To show how today’s best-run companies are achieving economic, social and environmental success – and how you can too.

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References:

1) This case study is based on published information by Rainbow Tourism Group, located at the link below. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses. However, we made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the report’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original, please revert to the original on the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database at the link:

http://database.globalreporting.org/

2) https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/

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