Edinburgh Napier University

  Social tourism networks are uniquely diverse, as they include beneficiaries who are usually excluded from tourism participation. They often rely on collaborations with social organisations outside of tourism. This paper discusses the ‘Large Scale Listening’ project conducted by the Holiday Participation Centre, the social tourism division of Tourism Flanders (Belgium). In the project, 1004 micro-narratives were collected. After narrators told their stories, they were presented with a list of follow-up questions that allowed them to tag and code their own stories, enabling them to directly influence how their stories were interpreted. The findings of the study highlight a joint commitment to social tourism, but differences in perspectives between different stakeholder groups in terms of the travel participation enablers and inhibitors.