Dr Lynn Minnaert receives social tourism research award
Friday 27 April 2012
The Family Holiday Association (FHA), the UK’s largest social tourism charity, has recognised the work of Dr Lynn Minnaert with a Research Award. The award was presented during the charity’s Annual General Meeting by Prunella Scales, a patron of FHA. The cooperation between Lynn and the Family Holiday Association started in 2005, when she carried out a study into the benefits of tourism participation for low-income families.
The study used focus groups and in-depth interviews with the beneficiaries of the charity and their social support workers, and was based on a semi-longitudinal design. It showed that social tourism participation can have beneficial impacts on the participant’s self-esteem, family relations, social networks and mental well-being. Moreover, the holiday was shown to be a motivation for further behaviour change in the longer term. Since 2005, Lynn has worked with FHA on a study involving teenage mothers (also in cooperation with Tourism Flanders), and most recently they have obtained funding to research the value of holidays for women who have experienced domestic violence and their children.
