SOCIAL TOURISM AS A POTENTIAL MEASURE TO REDUCE SOCIAL EXCLUSION
(For full text and references please refer to MINNAERT, L., MAITLAND, R. & MILLER,
G. (2009), “Tourism and social policy – The value of social tourism”, in: “Annals of
Tourism Research”, Vol. 36, nº 2, 316-334) 1. DEFINITION “Social tourism” is a term used to describe a wide variety of holiday types, destinations and target groups: social tourism initiatives can be commercial and non-commercial, governmental and private. They range from small charities organising holidays for children from low-income backgrounds, over government plans improving accessibility in hotels, to private tour operators offering ecological holidays. What all of these initiatives have in common, is that they bring a moral dimension to tourism, and that their primary aim is to include people in tourism who would otherwise be excluded from it. This text will focus particularly on one of these groups: low-income families with children, who cannot afford to go on holiday without support.

2. A POTENTIAL POLICY AGAINST SOCIAL EXCLUSION? Supporters of visitor-related social tourism for low-income groups like to view this type of social tourism as a potential measure in the fight against social exclusion. This view was recently supported by the European Economic and Social Committee, which, in its
Barcelona declaration, links social tourism to a set of benefits, which include improvement of well-being, personal development of the beneficiaries and the host community,
European citizenship, improved health and increased employment opportunities (EESC
2006, 73). In several countries of mainland Europe (for example France, Belgium, Spain), social tourism – mostly in the form of low-cost, national holidays- is supported by public funding.
In Britain and the US, social tourism for low-income groups is a less well-known phenomenon, and rarely supported by government