Developing a Social Media Code of Ethics for Hostel World
Last week I discussed the topic of Social Media Influencers and in the process talked about the company hostelworld.com. This is a company connecting travelers to different hostels all over the world.
In this week’s discussion, I want to use the same company to talk about the topic of Ethics. Ethics are defined as moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity. (Disctonary.com) To assure that a company has well defined and consistent ways of handling crises and disseminating messages many will create ethical guides. These can be viewed as roadmaps and will guide your team down a predetermined ethical road.
When deciding what to include in this code of ethics for hostelworld I landed on three Key factors: Safety, Accuracy, and Transparency.
Safety
Although world travel is enjoyable and for the most part safe, there is some risk involved when traveling to foreign places. I want to stress that safety will always be the company’s number one priority. We do not want to partner with any operation which is not conducted in a safe environment. This means that the website and listing will regularly be updated to provide travel warnings issued by the department of state. We do not want to showcase any reckless behavior on our social media platforms that is creating a false representation of an activity or location. We want to assure you that the locations and activities which we feature across our platform have been thoroughly evaluated and proven reputable.
Accuracy
When booking a trip there is a lot of research that must be done by the participants. We went to assure that our content is curated and up to date as to not spread misinformation about locations, activities, or offerings.
Transparency
We want to be honest on our social media, we do not want to sell an idea that isn’t the truth. We believe that the beauty of travel is authenticity to the location, the activities, and the people.
Conclusion
I believe that these Key factors of Safety, Accuracy, and Transparency will allow us to create a solid foundation for which we can behave ethically on our social media profiles. This is important to Hostel World as a business because we are working to connect people to new cultures and places. We want to assure that our customers are the best prepared they can be to have an amazing time while they see the world. In order to help prepare them we ourselves have to be prepared and this is why we establish and abide by a code of ethics.
