Management for the development of Social and Youth Tourism

the ‘social tourism’ system is undergoing a moment of great evolution. It presents itself as an articulated set of initiatives no longer conceived in welfare terms and with physical and psychological health purposes, but as a tool for human training and evolution, an indispensable experiential formula for the civil growth of the individual and the expansion of his or her sociality. Religious and devotional tourism, which is part of social tourism, is also evolving towards conviviality, and today tends to turn towards the local community and meeting, visiting the secular cultural heritage, tasting typical products, and purchasing authentic handicrafts in a framework of care for the environment.
The social tourism system no longer exclusively represents the tourism of weaker persons or socially disadvantaged categories, but addresses all citizens by proposing planned and organised tourism activities, capable of meeting the needs of many and also representing an opportunity for territorial regeneration. In this direction, the Apulia Region is promoting various initiatives to support economic, tourist and social operators capable of networking but also innovative projects capable of showing new operational models in response to the demands of inclusive and accessible tourism. The ITS course proposes to train a figure that supports the qualitative improvement of hospitality businesses, boosting a more conscious tourism, ensuring guests the easiest, most comfortable and safest way to carry out their activities, deriving psychophysical wellbeing and enhancing opportunities for socialisation and personal interaction.

the ITS Course “Management for the Development of Social and Youth Tourism” aims to train a professional able to design an accessible and inclusive hospitality, to make each person feel like an active protagonist of their own tourist experience and able to generate an interdisciplinary social approach for those who enjoy that destination. It creates an innovative product capable of combining territorial identity and openness to the outside world, the practice of travel as a privileged moment of discovery of other environments and people that contribute to the creation of a social bond. This is why it operates both at a company and territorial level in order to organise a correct interaction between human activities and the places where they are carried out, contributing to an economically and socially sustainable development through productive, social and cultural supply chain initiatives that meet the needs of a ‘tourism for and with all’. The Technician is able to identify and implement ideas that enhance elements of uniqueness, to activate networks, investments, intelligence and skills, also creating new job opportunities through the involvement and participation of economic actors and the population in the development of plans and programmes and in the definition of system actions. It also oversees the realisation of socialisation and edutainment initiatives for the multiple recipients of social tourism.

Participants will be able to:

• promote tourism as a factor of social cohesion, territorial balance/rebalance and international solidarity, targeting especially the youth segment
• equip tourism companies with common tools to strengthen their production processes
• support the management of hospitality businesses by providing services designed around the person and their social-relational dimension
• strengthen integration with other cultural or cross-sectoral actors by enhancing management systems and expanding the range of services
• activate shared promotion and marketing channels by leveraging digital technologies to safeguard territorial roots and achieve economies of scale
• activate new forms of collaboration with local authorities and administrations, also by exploiting the capillarity of the cooperative presence in the territory
• encourage the emergence of new co-operative businesses also with a view to personalising the travel experience, building loyalty and audience development
• leverage a set of interventions, including intangible ones, that enhance the quality of life in the area and the tourist enhancement of the area and its peculiarities