Building bridges between academics and professionals: what?s the role of scientific research on social tourism?

Abstract

As Bélanger and Jolin, 10 years ago, mentioned, “social tourism sector is at the core of a humanistic vision for tourism” and because of that it isn’t surprising that we are all here discussing social sustainability and tourism as a real hope on a truly better future, a future made for people, where tourism can become a good example and a driver for change. This presentation will focus on why is it important that there exists research on social tourism and why that research may be the bridge between academics and professionals. In tourism, nowadays, many of us say that COVID was a unique opportunity to rethink the tourism sector. UNWTO just dedicated the World Tourism Day, a few weeks ago, to that theme and to think how the sector could be more resilient, sustainable and inclusive, given the huge challenges we are facing (labor market, rising inequalities as well as geopolitical tensions). In those challenges we may see enormous potential for the academia (with research) and the tourism agents (public and private) to collaborate with each other in finding a better path for the sector in the future. Research is the effective way to rethink how we do tourism.