Valerie Reese, CTIE
There are a lot of buzz words in the travel industry today with “experiential”, “immersive”, “active”, and “educational” being just a few examples. While I adore any and all ways to experience the world, I am particularly passionate about “educational travel” and am here to explore what that term means, who it applies to, and why we should all strive to have our travels fall into this category.
If you search the internet for the phrase “educational travel” you will get pages, advertisements, and links for companies that promote their tours as being “educational” in the sense that they visit major historical sites, focus on the local culture and language and get you “facetime” with important places and landmarks that were previously only read about in textbooks or seen in movies.
In fact, the first website that comes up for me when I search that term is for a company called EF Tours (EF being short for Education First). EF Tours’ front page insinuates that their tours “Inspire a new perspective on the world”. On more than one occasion throughout my high school and college years, I have traveled with this company and I can tell you that that is exactly what happened for me. EF Tours is the vessel that my high school Spanish teacher, Mrs. Bernard, utilized for many years to take the students of Lindale High School out of their corner of the world and open our eyes and hearts to things beyond East Texas.
My first experience with EF Tours, which was a trip to Italy, lit a fire in my life and set me on a path that would come to include two tours with EF, a study abroad summer in France, a summer in Belize working on an archaeological dig, and ultimately choosing a career in travel. However, after I graduated college, my travels apparently lost the designation of “educational” and were just considered “travel”. Why is that? What differentiates my travels now from my travels ten years ago? If there are differences, are they beneficial or are there things that should be remedied to get back to the open-minded spirit that seems to accompany the travels we take when we are younger and apparently more apt to learn from our voyages?
My stance is that all travel should be thought of and treated as educational travel, whether it be a person traveling alone or a family of five; whether it is across town, across the country, or spanning international borders. Travel, in and of itself, has the power and potential to alter our perceptions of the world around us, open doors (physically and metaphorically), and ultimately, as cheesy as it sounds, make the world a better place.
I say that travel has the potential to do these things because it is not the physical relocating of one’s body that has an effect on your life, but rather the change that you allow your new location (and the process it took to get there) to have on your psyche that are truly powerful. When we travel, we have to decide if we are going to see the world through our own current lens, or if we are going to allow the people and places we encounter to alter our perceptions of the world around and within us.
The psychology and sociology classes I took in college taught me that we all have a lens through which we see the world. The experiences we have gone through, the people who have been integral to us, the religion (or lack thereof) that we grew up with, and our socioeconomic status are just a few of the puzzle pieces that have formed our filter through which we see the world. These pieces affect how we perceive and experience every single thing that happens to or around us, whether we realize it or not.
One eye-opening experience for me was when I was standing in the lobby of our small, Italian hotel and I wanted to ask the receptionist a fairly simple question. I did not speak Italian, and he did not speak much English, so we resorted to using Google translate and having a pretty comical “conversation”. This was maybe the first time I had a first-hand experience with someone who spoke a language other than English and I was all but completely incapable of conversing with them. To lose the basic ability to communicate is humbling, funny, scary, and certainly overwhelming. My first thoughts likely went to “Why doesn’t he know any English?” but it was not long until I realized how self-centered that was.
Another time during my first travels with EF, several of us were playing soccer with some local kids outside of our hotel. Mrs. Bernard had been watching us interact and later pointed out that the Italian kids knew several American celebrities and had brought them up in conversation. She asked if any of us knew any Italian celebrities or actors and no one did. This seemingly basic question brought about bigger realizations for many of us. Why is it that they knew our actors/actresses? Why didn’t we know any of theirs? Was our culture more important than theirs? More prevalent, sure, but certainly not more important.
Realizing that there was such a huge world outside of our own was mind-boggling. While we had our own worries, stresses, school and family issues going on in our lives, we realized that there were kids across the world who had their own struggles that were in some ways identical to ours but also completely different. Travel got us out of our own heads for a while and into someone else’s shoes. Isolation forces you inward, while travel takes you outside of yourself. No matter your age, travel is a worthy endeavor to take part in.
Travel opens metaphorical and physical doors to experience languages, customs, religions, and ideas that we may have never come across before, and it is likely that, without travel, we may never come across them at all. I am blessed with an educated, strong, and loving mother who encourages questions and inquisitive minds. However, growing up in East Texas, there are only so many alternative cultures and languages one could be directly exposed to without the aid of travel.
I remember recently hearing a parent friend express their frustration with people saying that their kids are going to “change the world” and how much pressure that puts on them to do something extraordinary during their lives. In reality, they said, our children can in fact change the world by changing their world. The spheres of influence around them are their world: their friends, schools, and neighbors are each a part of their world. All of us have numerous chances every day to make our world – THE world – a better place by doing the small and big things that make a difference.
One term that has become more prevalent in recent years is “echo chamber”. The concept of an echo chamber is that your own ideas, thoughts, perspectives and stances are constantly reinforced as being the only correct ones because they are all you’re hearing. If you only speak to people who believe what you believe, only learn about one religion, only hear or speak one language, it makes sense that you would not know or care about any deviations from that.
In the travel industry, FAM trips (familiarization trips) are what suppliers use to help travel advisors experience a destination or a product first hand. They have discovered the same thing that educational travel companies have figured out, which is the fact that long-lasting impacts are infinitely more likely to occur when we see things with our own two eyes, breathe in the unique aromas of a hotel lobby, and shake hands with the manager at a hotel instead of just emailing them.
I recently went on a FAM trip to New York and this idea was once again reiterated to me. Sleeping and eating at the Lowell hotel left strong impressions on me, and I am therefore better able to sell the hotel, location, and experience than I ever could have from simply reading the descriptive blurb on their website. I hailed my own taxi for the first time and stumbled upon Bryant Park one morning while exploring, where I got to watch a class doing tai chi on the lawn on an apparently rare sunny New York morning. These experiences all but guarantee that I will have the kind of memories that stick. They are first-hand, boots on the ground, eyewitness accounts of what a destination has to offer, and they are highly coveted in our industry for good reason.
Taking into account the previous points made, travel helps us be better global citizens. We become better mothers, fathers, bosses, employees, and friends when exposed to the countless cultures and worlds outside of our own. These are occupational hazards of travel and opening one’s mind. The world is more connected now than ever and I do not believe that will change. Traveling can help you better understand what you are reading in the news and better equip you to discern when what you are reading may not be completely true (or at least not the whole truth). The once distant and far away lands and people we hear or read about suddenly become tangible, attainable, and relatable. You walked the streets, smelled the aromas and shook hands with these people – and while they may speak a different language from you and have different traditions, they are flesh and bone just like you are. They are families and individuals with passions, fears, hopes, and dreams. Traveling gives us the opportunity to forego stereotypes and judgments and draw our own conclusions based on real-life experiences.
I encourage everyone to travel, but I also realize many people do not, cannot, or do not care to. Fear not, as I believe the ideas discussed here are still applicable and, in some ways, even more important for those who stick closer to home. If we can apply these ideas to our own, local spheres of influence first, then we can begin to inspire change that will grow. In today’s modern world, ideas and thoughts that start small have nowhere to go but up and can spread like wildfire. Mrs. Bernard showed me that asking simple questions of ourselves or others can make all the difference in having more open-mindedness, empathy, and desire to learn. If we apply the concepts I have discussed to every interaction we have, including our neighbors, coworkers, friends, and even those we dislike or disagree with, our world will certainly become more open, understanding, loving, and a better place for our children and society as a whole.
So if “educational travel” is so great, why is it only available to students? Along those lines, what is a student? Where is the age cutoff? I would say that one possible reason the term “educational travel” is attributed primarily to high school and college students is that our young people are inherently more receptive to what the world has to offer. They are (hopefully) not yet set in their ways, so to speak, and maybe have not yet experienced how the world can sometimes make you jaded. Heartbreaking world events, bad relationships, and loss in life can make a heart hard as I am sure we have all experienced in one way or another.
We have all seen or thought about how kids haven’t experienced “the real world” yet and want to say to them, “just wait”. There are plenty of things we wish kids would hurry up and learn, but there are certainly some things that post-school adults can learn from their younger peers as well. May we all try to have a little bit of their innate naivety and put on their rose-colored glasses from time to time to see and inspire the best in people.
Thankfully, there are companies that are aiming to make “educational travel” available and known to travelers of all ages. Road Scholar, a company that advertises “educational travel for adults”, says on their website, “We are explorers, adventurers, and students of the world”. They believe what I believe, which is that these “educational” opportunities should not be available to or even encouraged for exclusively young people. Everyone can benefit from getting outside of their comfort zone and day-to-day routine, and everyone benefits from anyone doing so. They also align with my argument that all travel is educational travel, and I am eager to see more industry professionals adopt this belief and integrate such into their daily work and practice.
While my day-to-day goal is largely based on making sales now, there is a more prevalent goal in my life and that is to help others experience the world through travel and hopefully, come to realize the huge opportunity and privilege we have when we do. We have a chance to learn, to expand our minds and our hearts, and let in new ideas and paradigms. The phrase “educational travel” is redundant, and it is my mission to be the kind of person that can help educate and inspire those around me to discover the love of travel and more importantly, to travel in a way that tears down walls, biases, and judgments and makes the world a better place.
