Harnessing the Experiential Learning - the Impacts of Study Tours on Destination Experience and Revisit Intention

Experiential learning, the learning process through experience, is deemed as an important teaching and learning method in higher education across various disciplines. Study tours, service learning, internships, field trips, or project-based programmes are commonly used by colleges and university to enhance pedagogical learning objectives. These activities emphasize on the acquisition of “real world” skills knowledge to complement students’ study at schools and achievement of educational mission. Few studies have recognised the importance of educational tourism as a growing tourism niche market. Thus, this study fills this gap by uncovering whether educational tourism experiences can contribute to memorable destination experiences towards revisit intention. It also highlights the key factors for an effective study tour design.

A qualitative data collection was done which included 10 in-depth interviews with students who have joined any overseas experiential learning programmes during their college studies. The purpose of in-depth interviewing is to understand the motivation of college and university students in participating overseas experiential learning programmes and their perceived destination image changes after the tours. Semi-structured in-depth interviewing has been picked for this study, which aims to solicit interviewees’ points of view, opinions and attitudes towards experiential learning and its impacts on destination images and travel behaviour. Key factors were also identified from the interviews on effective study tour design. Content Analysis was adopted to analyse the qualitative data.


Keywords: Study tour, memorable experience, destination image, revisit intention, study tour design