Educational tourism and international student flows: an overview for future research

Abstract

Even though the interpretation of educational tourism by modern authors is very ambiguous, traditionally educational tourism is a combination of two concepts "education" and "tourism". The research is focused on the education first segment, where the main motive of travel is purposeful training or education, while the tourist experience is secondary. In the study, the author discusses a wide range of issues related to the problems of educational tourism: the lack of a conceptual framework and differentiation of consumers of educational tourism products; a clear understanding of the length of stay of academic tourists; the opacity and limitations of the methodology for assessing academic mobility and interpreting data based on the concept of foreign students; the lack of methodological tools to study the impact of educational tourism on the territorial development of the host country. This list is not exhaustive, there are still many issues in the discussion field that require academic attention and a holistic approach to understanding educational tourism. The purpose of the study is to draw the attention of scientists to the problems of educational tourism as one of the niche types of tourist activity with high potential and additional effects for the economies of the host territories, to identify arguments that will provoke new directions for research in the field of tourism. This study leads to a discussion that allows a more comprehensive look at the phenomenon under study, as well as to identify gaps in the knowledge base of educational tourism.