06 February 2007 - Brussels, Borschette Centre (Belgium): Conference "Social Tourism in the EU : Youths and Senior Citizens"

The European Commission has successfully built up an excellent working relationship with major European stakeholders in social tourism issues. This collaboration has enabled the Commission to draw upon the assistance and expertise of such stakeholders in some of its very own initiatives too. The Conference on Social Tourism organised by the Commission in January 2006 was a clear example of how and why full cooperation with stakeholders can lead to achieving desired objectives.

During this Conference in January 2006, the Commission presented the results of a survey (« Tourism for All 2006») on social tourism it had undertaken, and examined a number of good practices linked to the senior citizens` market.

As a follow-up to this successful conference, and within the context of the “European Year 2007 of Equal Opportunities for All”, the Tourism Unit organised a stakeholders' conference on the 6th February 2007 on “Social Tourism in the EU: Youths and Senior Citizens” in Brussels at the Borschette Centre.

The main objective of the conference was to identify whether there exists the possibility of extending collaboration on social tourism in different Member States that are currently less active than others in this field. The Conference was of primary interest to Member States but also to the existing stakeholders in this field, since the programme presented best practices and engaged the delegates in focussed discussions about the future directions for social tourism.

The overall theme was based on the Lisbon Strategy and incorporated two main topics in the day long event, focussing on youth tourism in the morning and senior citizens in the afternoon.

The morning session consisted primarily in an exploratory exercise to identify problem areas and increase awareness on best practices within the youth travel field. Important stakeholders such as the World Youth Student and Educational Travel Confederation and the European Union Federation of Youth Hostel Associations lent their support to this Conference, alongside other speakers from Germany, Italy and Slovenia that elaborated upon some good practices in their own particular country.

The European Commission presented the results of a Survey on Youths (see below presentation of Mr Ianniello) which was carried out in collaboration with the “Bureau International du Tourisme Social" (BITS). The Tourism Unit distributed two questionnaires (see below), one to Member States and the other to several stakeholders linked to the youth’s sector. Sixteen National Public Bodies, of which, two are candidate countries, returned the completed questionnaires. This is an encouraging response rate since besides these sixteen countries, Holland, Austria and Liechtenstein informed the Commission that they do not have any specific national research in the field of youth tourism.

Apart from the sixteen countries, twenty-two stakeholders provided feedback on the questionnaire. There was good geographical distribution, since even non EU countries replied. This allowed a sufficiently good indicative overview of the problems and issues within the youth sector as part of the Survey Analysis.

One of the questions asked within the questionnaire was to provide information through a pre-defined template on examples of good practices across Europe in the youth tourism field. In this regard, the Commission is facilitating the dissemination of such good practices by placing them on the Tourism Unit’s web site, in order to raise awareness at Europe-wide level and to facilitate networking between the stakeholders themselves.

Any additional stakeholders who may wish to indicate their good practices are invited to do so by compiling this document (word version) and returning it to entr-tourism@ec.europa.eu . Potential respondents are requested to send feedback only on the proposed template, to ensure uniformity.

The afternoon session gave rise to a more focused approach built on the findings of the January 2006 Conference. By examining the European applicability of successful national models as previously identified in this Conference, the focus was on one excellent good practice, the one adopted by IMSERSO in Spain and which was presented and highlighted in the Commission’s first Conference. This time however, speakers did not discuss the scheme per se, but rather focused on examining whether this national model had the potential to become an Europeanised model that allows for low season exchanges in social tourism between a number of Member States.

Speakers in this afternoon session were top officials from either Spain itself or neighbouring countries like France, Portugal or the Republic of Andorra that have already experienced contact with IMSERSO. It is through the prospects and practical difficulties faced by these key players that delegates discussed and reflected upon the possibility of giving this good practice, or other similar initiatives, a more accentuated European dimension.

The European Commission agreed to actively participate in initiatives led by competent bodies like BITS in forming a network of interested parties to closely monitor developments in the field of social tourism.