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Learning Vacations
By Prof. Ed Williams, President, TraveLearn ®
American Demographics magazine in the summer of
2002 had an article entitled, “Trend Ticker: The Exotic Travel Boom,” and
subtitled, “After consumers have acquired most of the possessions they want,
their attention turns to buying unique experiences.” This article, which pointed out that the 55 to 74-year-old
age segment of the population would be fueling the growth of this travel trend
for the next decade, confirms the experience of TraveLearn, a company that
specializes in learning vacations for adults.
Today’s consumers over age 55 are wealthier, healthier, and
better educated than their parents or grandparents. These better educated and
sophisticated travelers want more than the usual travel experience. Educated
travelers are tiring of the kind of whirlwind trips Arthur Frommer has
criticized as “trivial and bland, devoid of important content, cheaply
commercial, and unworthy of our better instincts and ideas.” Curious travelers
are looking for more than the standard tourist vacation, which is often no more
than an airline ticket and a series of hotel rooms. When they travel abroad,
they want more depth, a chance to talk with the people in the places they visit,
an understanding of the area’s history, geography and culture, and
accommodations that suit their lifestyle. In
short they are looking for vacations that provide education, adventure, and
pleasure.
Growing numbers of these educated travelers are looking to
museums, universities, and colleges for learning vacations, or what TraveLearn
calls, “tourism as cultural learning.”
These travelers have gone beyond the awe of a first-time trip, and would
appreciate understanding, in much more depth, the things they are seeing.
Conventional tour companies can arrange for you to visit the
places that you expect to go and show you the things that you expect to see on a
trip, but without contact with local people, and informative interpretive guides
and resource people, these experiences often feel as empty as if you had only
viewed them on television.
Learning vacations include on-site lectures, seminars and
field experiences conducted by carefully selected national and local guides,
faculty experts from participating universities and colleges, and other resource
people who provide their special insight into the culture of their country.
Groups on these vacations never exceed 20 travelers in order to assure a close
interaction between the participants and accompanying escorts and guides.
Finally, learning vacations should also provide the opportunity to meet and
speak with the people of the
country, and visit sites and facilities often not available to tourists on more
conventional tours.
For example, at a campsite near Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya, a wildlife expert talks to tour groups about elephant behavior. In Morocco, the personal interpreter of former King Hassan II explains the country’s traditions and religious beliefs. A visit to China’s countryside allows visitors to have lunch with Chinese farmers and to observe veteran kite-makers, wood block printers and furniture makers working at their crafts
The
trend toward combining travel and learning is one
that is going to continue to grow, particularly among the educated
55 to 74 year-old age segment who are looking for the perfect educational
tour which will allow them to learn and to experience a culture, not just visit
it.
Prof. Williams is a former university teacher who has specialized in learning vacations for adults for more than 25 years and has written about this growing trend for 10.