Social Tourism in the World and Turkey

Abstract

In European countries, social tourism is a well-known tourism strategy implemented to provide a better life by involving disadvantaged groups in social activities. Tourism, which is a need of developed societies, continues its development by spreading to social strata that are large and have limited economic power. This phenomenon has been identified as “Social Tourism”, which is a type of institutionalized private tourism that gained importance rapidly after the Second World War. Social tourism; It covers the participation of the masses with relatively insufficient economic power in tourism with some special precautions and aids and all the relations created by this. Social tourism has an important place in today's tourism policies. Among the special purposes of social tourism are the transportation of tourism to large masses and the benefit of these masses from all kinds of opportunities such as vacation, rest and entertainment. Social tourism environment in Turkey has positive and negative features. In terms of natural opportunities, there are wide opportunities for social tourism as well as for traditional tourism.