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Sun Sand Sea and Sweatshops

Making the world's biggest industry fair

As a result of Tourism Concern's Sun, Sand, Sea and Sweatshops campaign, all the UK’s leading tour operators have now adopted policies on labour conditions for hotels included in their holiday packages.

While we relax in the sunshine around the world, life is far from paradise for the waiters, cleaners, cooks, porters, drivers, receptionists and other staff working to make our holidays happy and carefree.

Watch Tourism Concern's Sun, Sand, Sea, and Sweatshops video

Working conditions in the tourism industry are notoriously exploitative. Tourism Concern has uncovered abusive labour conditions in the hotels in our holiday destinations. These hotels are included in the holiday of the brochures of the four major tour operators in the UK. These conditions keep workers in poverty and violate the labour standards laid out in national and international legislation.

Demanding rights for workers

Tourism is the world’s biggest industry, employing an estimated 220 million people worldwide. It is an industry that is highly competitive and dominated by large western operators and companies. Tourism workers are often employed by local companies rather than by foreign tour operators. As tour operators are employing these local companies to provide our holidays, they have a clear responsibility to ensure compliance with labour standards laid out in national and international legislation. It is simply unacceptable for tour operators to profit from illegal and exploitative practices and then refuse to acknowledge their legal and ethical responsibilities. Tour operators also have a responsibility to holidaymakers, to ensure that their holidays are not tainted by human rights abuses.

It's just not fair!

Tourism can be a powerful force for good - but only if it’s fair! Tourism Concern is working to make sure tourism is fair. Tourism workers are not earning a living wage, are dependent on tips and service charges, cannot join trade unions, suffer stress and poor working conditions, have temporary contracts or none at all, work long hours and are not paid for overtime.

Consuela, waitress
Consuela cleans rooms at an all-inclusive four-star hotel on the south-east coast of the Dominican Republic. She works from 8am to 7pm. Her wages are low and for much of her day - which falls outside her contracted hours - she receives no pay at all.

“The conditions for the worker in the Dominican Republic are very poor. Our salaries are not enough to satisfy our main necessities such as food, clothes, housing, electricity and water. Every day we think about what we’re going to eat and how to pay for the electricity. We have to smile to the tourists but it is not what we are feeling in our souls. We want to work and we want to make your holidays happy. But it is difficult”

Juan, waiter
Juan works as a waiter in a 5-star hotel and is dependent on tips to earn a living wage. In the popular resort of Cancun, Mexico, where he works, the cost of living is so high that Juan can only afford to share a room with seven other workers, all sleeping in tiered hammocks.

Tourism operators must act to make tourism fair

In view of the evidence that exploitative labour conditions are widespread, unacknowledged and hidden, Tourism Concern is demanding that tour operators make radical improvements to labour conditions in the tourism industry.

We need your help

You can be a powerful force for change. Tourism Concern is calling on holidaymakers to demand fair and legal labour conditions in the tourism industry and to inform tour operators that they will not book their holidays with those who exploit tourism workers.