Growing degrowth-oriented tourism? CSR certified tour operators as change agents.

Abstract This chapter acknowledges the substantial role tour operators play in the tourism industry as intermediaries bundling different individual tourism offerings together. The study adopts an evolutionary approach through the analyses of tour operators' sustainability and audit reports and investigates whether German tour operators who have gained the corporate social responsibility (CSR) certification 'TourCert' have the potential to act as change agents, upscale the downscaling idea of degrowth and contribute to a reformist pathway of structural change. The findings reveal that CSR certification schemes do not seem to genuinely foster the restructuring of the tourism market within the capitalist system, but can only marginally advocate and diffuse certain elements of degrowth-oriented tourism. At the same time, CSR certification schemes lack the influence necessary for a paradigm shift and for this reason the approach of degrowth-oriented tourism seems unsuitable for mainstream application.