Social tourism in Brazil

Abstract

In recent years, tourism has undergone a growing process of segmentation, with the post-Fordist reorganization of production and consumer habits. This has led to growing numbers of niche tourism products and an increasing demand for this type of holiday. These dynamics have, in turn, had a knock-on effect on social tourism, with the development of more and more social tourism programmes targeted at groups of certain characteristics (segmented by income, age or disability, among others) who had had limited access to tourism. Segmentation in the field of social tourism might be more attributable to possible business interests than to its original objective – to benefit disadvantaged groups. However, not all instances of social tourism have evolved in the same way, and some cases of tourism products can be found that aim to meet the differing needs of diverse groups. To gain a better insight into the functioning of this kind of initiative and its outcomes, an analysis will be made of SESC Bertioga in Brazil. This is a holiday resort attached to SESC Sao Paulo, a flagship organization in the field of social tourism in Latin America. The research was conducted through two field trips, combining observation and reviews of secondary documents with in-depth interviews with 17 members of staff from the holiday resort's different departments. The analysis shows that SESC Bertioga manages to offer high-quality services to broad-ranging members of the public, while also fulfilling two more of the principles of social tourism: decent working conditions for its staff and the holiday resort's successful integration into the local community.