February 2012
Polibienestar Research Institute at the University of Valencia Spain analysed tourism’s impact on older people’s functional health and potential use of social tourism as a social policy to promote active and healthy ageing. Their results found that elderly peoples who had traveled in the past year had a better self-perceived health, increased autonomy to carry out Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) as well as a lower use of social and health services. Polibienestar concluded that Accessible Social Tourism could be used as a social and health policy in order to increase the quality of life of the ageing population as well as reduce their associated costs on the government.
The results of the research demonstrated that elderly people who had travelled during 2010 were in better physical health, had a greater capacity of movement and physical function and typically had superior mental health in relation to vitality than elderly people who had not travelled in 2010. Furthermore, elderly persons who travelled were quite similar to the general population in terms of health whereas elderly persons who did not travel presented lower physical and vitality functions.
Polibienestar received the Turismo Accesible (Accessible Tourism) prize due to this research.
For more information, please visit: www.polibienestar.org
