Social innovation possibilities in tourism

Abstract

Social innovation is the process of developing and implementing new solutions to social problems. Most of the Hungarian and international papers apply social marketing and other spatial development approaches, and just rarely examine this question in connection with tourism. Many research deals with this issue from entrepreneurial viewpoints (e.g. Howards-Grenville et al 2014, Schrempf 2014), or examines institutional questions (e.g. Dorado 2013, Zietsma and Lawrence 2010), or management, CSR and inter-sectoral partnerships (e.g. De Bakker et al 2005). However, there are good examples for social innovations in tourism, too, for instance in route-based tourism (e.g. Lourens 2007). This paper – besides giving a general literature review – intends to present some possibilities of social innovation application in tourism, by collecting best practices, successful results, then to point out some national cases in the field of thematic tourism development.