The Institutionalization of Business Ethics of Travel Agencies in Serbia

Abstract

The task of the paper is to point out the importance of applying regulations of legislative documents in order to achieve an appropriate level of ethical behaviour of participants in tourism. The paper also points up to the existence of the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism UNWTO. It is a basic mechanism which directs an appropriate ethical conduct of all stakeholders in tourism and requires concretization in Serbia as well. The special importance of the work is related to basic principles of ethical codes of conduction of the association of travel agencies in Great Britain (ABTA), Slovenia (ZTAS) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (UTA BiH). That kind of document still does not exist in Serbia, nor does indicate its establishment and use. Furthermore, the lack of research works focused to the issue in Serbia requires a discussion about the importance of institutionalizing business ethics in tourism. In order to address a research problem, researchers have applied different methods in each particular phase of the research process. Method used for data collection is desk research. This phase provided data from available references, while data processing was accomplished by description, examination as well as comparison.

Keywords

• business ethics
• ethical code
• travel agencies
• Serbia
• institutionalization