Development of educational tourism in Lithuanian rural areas

Abstract

Tourism development contributes to the vitality of rural areas: it increases employment opportunities for residents, promotes the development of relations among different business entities and attractiveness of rural environment. In this article, the situation regarding the development of one type of tourism-educational tourism-in Lithuanian rural areas, factors encouraging and limiting this development have been analyzed. The research question is what are the main problems regarding the development of educational tourism in rural areas. The aim of the research is to present relevant solutions after the analysis of the problems regarding the development of educational tourism in rural areas. Theoretical research was performed while applying methods of content analysis and synthesis of scientific literature and other researches. The method of case analysis was chosen to describe the state of the development of educational tourism and to identify main problems. In total 18 cases were analyzed (18 providers of the educational tourism services in rural areas). In order to collect necessary information, methods of semi-structured interview, analysis of secondary informational resources and direct participation in researched educational programs were applied. The development of educational tourism is promoted by the factors related to the environment of manor, historical place or nature as well as professional qualification, working experience, enthusiasm and ability to be flexible about customers' needs of actors responsible for rural development. Volatility of demand regarding educational programs, lack of specialists and challenges related to cooperation were identified as problematic issues.

Educational tourism as an economic category and a tool for increasing the competitiveness of the tourism industry: conceptual framework and classification

“…3. analysis of international experience of successful implementation of educational tourism in the learning environment in different countries of the world: UAE (Antiado et al, 2016), Ecuador (Bastidas-Andrade et al, 2020), ASEAN countries (Maga et al, 2018;Wijayanti et al, 2017;Matahir et al, 2017;Megawati, 2018), Spain (Lua et al, 2019), South Africa (McGladdery et al, 2017, Japan (Nagai et al, 2018), United Kingdom (Si et al, 2019), Lithuania (Zaleckiene et al, 2019), and others; 4. assessing the impact of educational tourism on the economic growth of regions (Tang, 2021) and the development of tourist destinations (Tomasi et al, 2020); 5. studying the role of using modern information and communication technologies in the implementation of educational tourism areas, including, for example, smart audio guides, digital pedagogical and tourism platforms, unified digital ecosystems (Manolitsis et al, 2020).…”

Exploring Students’ Push and Pull Motivations to Visit Rural Educational Tourism Sites in China

“…The push-pull theory is an effective motivation research theory that focuses on the needs of tourists, combines intrinsic motivation with the attributes of destinations, and realizes the link between demand and supply. For the educational tourism (ET) industry, it is very important to understand consumer needs and apply them to the supply side because this can provide guidance for destination operators [1][2][3][4]. Researchers and industry professionals are assured that educational tourism will continue to play a big role in the tourism industry despite the fact that COVID-19 has had a substantial impact on it.…”

“…Rural educational travel has become an ally of agriculture, promoting agricultural diversification, narrowing the income gap between urban and rural areas [13], and adjusting the phenomenon of rural population loss [10]. It helps promote the development of relationships between different business entities [4] and attracts young people [11]. In addition to the benefits to society, it also brings tangible benefits to tour operators, increasing the operators' income and competitive advantage [14,15], and therefore recovery of the rural operators, i.e., the farmers' and landowners' self-esteem [16].…”