Social tourism refers to initiatives that aim to include groups into tourism that would otherwise be excluded from it. The earliest definition of social tourism by Hunzicker (1951) described social tourism as ‘‘the relationships and phenomena in the field of tourism resulting from participation in travel by economically weak or otherwise disadvantaged elements in society’’ (1951:1). Minnaert et al. (2007, 2009, 2011) define social tourism as tourism with an added moral value, of which the primary objective is to benefit the host or the visitor in the tourism exchange. Traditionally, social tourism has been seen to refer to budget-friendly holidays in the own country, either individual or as part of a group, or in some cases day trips to theme parks, museums and attractions, that are funded or made available at highly reduced rates, by charities or agencies in the public sector (Minnaert et al, 2011). In recent years however, private sector partners have increasingly played a role in social tourism provision, and have – through discounting and competitive pricing – allowed tourism products and services to be enjoyed by ever-greater numbers of citizens, begging the question: should existing social tourism definitions and conceptualizations reflect this growing role of private sector agencies?