How to use education to create “eduvacations”
September 2008
Educational vacations are one of the fastest growing areas of the tourism world and offer new and innovative ideas for almost any community to expand its product offering. This phenomenon is bound to grow as baby boomers retire and seek new and interesting experiences. Amazingly even college towns often do not take advantage of this product and tend to assume that local universities will do the work for them. Educational tourism can be packaged in a variety of ways, from short specialization weekends to yearlong study abroad programs. From a tourism perspective, here are just some of the ways that your community can develop unique and innovative forms of educational tourism:
- Academic seminars and classes
- Academic conferences
- Special study camps
- Special skills camps (such as sports camps)
- Special outdoors activities that provide an educational component
Although educational tourism comes in a variety of formats, all forms of educational tourism have a number of items in common. Among these are, the idea that travel is as much about self-improvement as it is about relaxation, that learning can be fun, and that learning is for people of all ages. Interestingly part of what many people desire from an eduvacation is some form of certification to prove that the “vacationer” has accomplished “X” task. Not every form of eduvacation is right for every community. Here is a listing of some of the eduvacations offerings that you might consider:
Here are just some of the ways that travel and education vacations merge into “eduvacations.”
- School trips. These short to midrange travel experiences are can be booms to a local economy. School travel can range for visits to museums and historic sites to ecology and national parks. Do you have a special brochure or section on your website listing places of interest for schools? Do schoolteachers know where they can take their students to eat or find special things to buy as part of the trip experience? Schoolteachers tend to seek out places where they can offer a new skill or show something about life that complements what they teach in the classroom.
- Specialized Training. For example in Santa Maria da Feira (Portugal) the Sportspeople Soccer Academy receives students from around the world who wish to improve on their soccer skills. Students study under expert coaches and have the opportunity not only to learn from Portugal’s top stars but also to tour the country.
- Alternative ‘spring break” travel experiences. There is no part of the world that does not have something to teach and something to learn from the world of the travel. Currently the “Alternative spring break” experience provides an example of how travel can serve the world and make it a better place. Serious college and university students are often the people who seek this form of travel. These students tend to be polite and offer few social problems. They come for a week and then leave. Many come from upper class families and can well afford to make multiple purchases. While many of these trips are to foreign countries, this worldwide phenomenon also attracts domestic experience seekers. Make a list of what you can offer as an alternative spring break project and then make sure that people around the world know how happy you will be to receive them. These alternative spring breaks involve thousands of young people who rather than choosing a beach vacation, use their time to help those around the world who are less fortunate than themselves.
- Study abroad experiences. Most major universities promote some form of foreign travel for their students. Study abroad experiences provide students with anything from 6-week intensive study sessions to a full year of cultural and linguistic emersion. Students often travel not only within their destination country of choice but throughout that county and even to neighboring lands. The goal here is to widen the educational experience so that university students do not only know their own culture but also that of at least one other nation. Nations such as the United States and Australia have done a masterful job in promoting English language learning as a tourism attraction. Spain, Mexico and Guatemala have done the same with Spanish. Florence, Italy has used its cultural resources to attract serious students and Israel uses its multiple religious and spiritual attractions plus Hebrew language learning to attract people from around the world who want to experience a year in the “Holy Land” or learn to speak in the language of the Bible.
- Seminar and skill enhancement vacations. These types of travel experience especially appeal to those who have recently retired. Programs such as elder hostel provide senior citizens with everything from a chance to learn about the arts to physics lectures or astronomy. They are conducted at camps and on campuses around the world. Closely related to seminar vacations are “hands-on enhanced experience” vacations. For example, each year thousands of people travel to Israel to learn something about an archeological dig and then pay to participate on such a dig. Another good example is Costa Rica, which has been extremely successful with eco-tourism in which visitors combine lessons on how to protect the world’s ecology with the travel experience.
- Educational cruises. These cruises combine all of the fun of a cruise with lectures on specific subjects. Educational cruises have the advantage that people who take them tend to have a common interest and therefore have a greater possibility of making new friends while acquiring new knowledge.
Eduvacations do not need to be based around a major attraction. Instead consider some of the following educational resources that your community may have:
- -People who live in the community with unique skill sets. Eduvacations are not about grades, but about self-improvement and having fun. Make a list of people in your community who have a special skill set. These people can range from shoemakers to math professors. People who have a craft such as weaving or play a music instrument can become a major tourism resource
- -Offer an organized program that appears on a well-done brochure.
- -Make a list of things that you can teach others. Every community has something special that it can teach people. The challenge is to package the eduvacation program in such a way that learning becomes fun rather than a hassle. Never forget that these people are choosing to come to your community. Make your eduvacation fun and hospitable and you are sure to have a success.
