ABSTRACT
Social tourism research, at least in the academic literature in English, has gone through a period of rapid development in the past 5 to 10 years. From a subject that was addressed but sporadically, it has received increasing levels of attention from researchers, resulting in a growing number of publications and a higher profile in tourism studies. The fact that this collection of papers, drawing on a special issue of the journal Current Issues in Tourism, has been selected to be enhanced and published as a research volume, is a testament to the more prominent position social tourism now takes in academic tourism research.
