LETTER | The increasing demand for immersive experiences with travellers seeking out activities that offer a deep dive into local cultures, traditions and cuisines by moving away from generic tourist attractions towards more authentic and off-the-beaten-path experiences is labelled as experiential tourism and a future trend in tourism.
Research travel, according to a resource centre, means to travel for groups or individuals for the express purpose of conducting research or receiving specialised training as approved by a faculty adviser, as well as for an honours thesis, Master's thesis or doctoral dissertation.
If so, it is part of edu-tourism, which is to travel for formal or informal education and lifelong learning in unique natural, historical and multicultural environments.
The United Nations World Tourism Organisation defines education tourism as covering those types of tourism which has a primary motivation of the tourist's engagement and experience in learning self-improvement, intellectual growth and skills development.
Education tourism represents a broad range of products and services related to academic studies, skill enhancement holidays, school trips, sports training, career development courses and language courses, among others.
Anyone travelling on edu-tourism would have spent considerable time and effort checking on the suitability of the courses, institutions, destinations and living conditions.
Most would arrive adequately prepared with sufficient funds and are housed in pre-arranged accommodations.
Globally, countless millions of edu-tourists have done so over the past century. Since the advent of the internet, information can be accessed and communicated easily, more so with the widespread use of smartphones today.
So, what is research travel? Is it to conduct research on a destination before reaching there or to conduct research upon arrival? As such, I am baffled to receive an invitation by phone to join a webinar on Oct 15 aptly titled – “What is research travel?”
Is it just another guise to market tourism products by setting up yet another platform? In Malaysia, there are many tourism and travel associations with grand-sounding names with few members but with large numbers of elected and appointed officials in executive committees.
Time will tell
Interestingly, those helming the Malaysia Chapter of the World Research Travel Organisation have been prominent personalities in the local tourism industry, ranging from a former minister to secretary general, director general and CEO of an agency under the Finance Ministry.
Hence, the organisation looks promising but will it get the buy-ins from the tourism industry and the travelling public? Only time and results will tell.
Using logic alone, research travel is not a tourism product per se. Just like responsible tourism, it is something to be applied to all tourism products to promote sustainability. Similarly, salt, sugar and spices are taste enhancers and are not food by themselves.
However, those promoting research travel will have a better explanation and how convincing that will be depends on the narratives put forward.
It can be a future trend if the term is concretised so that it can be easily understood and embraced by many industry players and travellers.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
