Social tourism in Egypt : travel agencies’ perspective

Abstract EN

Social tourism is one of the significant tourism patterns that has appeared in the eastern lump.

There were camps prepared for workers at the different tourist areas for renewing their activity, psychological and physical abilities.

Nowadays, it has become clear in many countries that mass tourism tours are organized at low prices with various facilities, including cheap accommodation, and there is what is called premium tourism system that permits travel opportunity for any one at any time on a condition that the fees of the tour could be paid on a number of premiums as followed in the U.S.A.

The latter is also called tourist saving system as the tourist manages to assign certain amount of their income as a deposit within a fund box for travel purposes .Switzerland is considered a pioneer destination that applies such system in which social tourism includes youth tourism, disabled tourism and solidarity tourism.

Egypt has many obstacles that could affect social tourism, including population growth, high rates of unemployment, high poverty rates and their consequences on governmental expenditure in addition to other obstacles that might stand as a hindrance in front of developing social tourism pattern.

This current study aims to assess the current status of social tourism in Egypt, the abilities and available resources of social tourism, identify the obstacles of social tourism in Egypt.

The research depends on the descriptive approach, deep-structured interviews accompanied with open-ended and open-closed questions addressed to Egyptian travel agencies.

The main finding of the study is that social tourism in Egypt has many obstacles.

The study provides- with support of the real field view- some recommendations directed particularly to develop the social tourism in Egypt.