Experts and mentors of the competition “Masters of Hospitality” – a project of the Presidential Platform “Russia – Land of Opportunities”< strong>, as well as leaders of the tourism industry, shared their experience at the case session “Educational tourism – the way to the world of professions” as part of the business program MMCO.EXPO-2023. During the discussion, they discussed the prospects for the development of educational and educational tourism for children, as well as the best Russian practices in this area. The session was attended by the parent and educational community of the country's regions, school directors, and teachers.< /p>
As part of the discussion in the “blitz” format, the participants discussed educational tourism as effective? career guidance tool, prospects, opportunities and difficulties of forming a specialized offer? in the field of educational tourism, vocational guidance for schoolchildren and the formation of applied skills, talked about the best practices of educational tourism and the possibility of partnership between regions in this context.
Session moderator, expert of the “Masters of Hospitality” competition, Deputy Head of the Department for the Development of Educational Tourism of the Project Office for the Development of Tourism and Hospitality of Moscow Konstantin Starostinnoted that tourism in synergy with education performs not only educational functions, but also forms children? and youth practical skills that cannot be formed by theoretical knowledge. Acquaintance with reality through contact with it?, through trial action, research and design are the key lines of modernization of education.
The director of the Gorodetsk Historical and Art Museum Complex shared her experience in the field of educational and educational tourism winner and expert of the “Masters of Hospitality” competition Ekaterina Kryunas: “I am convinced that every territory in our country, even small towns and regions as a whole, is unique in its own way. It is important to reveal all this potential to a special, young category of people – our children. I consider it our most important task with burning eyes and love for our cities to convey to schoolchildren the importance of studying and preserving the history and culture of their small Motherland and country, to make them fall in love with the territories where the children were born and live, so that the growing the generation didn't want to leave when they grew up.”
Expert of the Masters of Hospitality contest, managers? partner Territory.rf Anna Bulochnikova answered the question of how the regions of the Russian Federation are developing today in terms of educational tourism and how studying their hometown can motivate schoolchildren to continue their studies in the region.
“For the regions, educational tourism is a chance to get a large, regular, stable tourist flow (its size is guaranteed from year to year) without high marketing costs, and, most importantly, it can cover the needs of local businesses for customers outside the main tourist season” , – noted Anna.
During the conversation, the experts noted that children's educational tourism is a new direction that focuses on the trips of children and youth around the country for the purpose of career guidance and patriotic education of children through acquaintance with history, culture, and nature. One of the problems that the regions are now facing is the low capacity of a quality product that would be interesting for children and convenient for teachers and parents to buy. Experts call the root of this problem the lack of mechanisms for interaction between operators, carriers, local education management system, display and service objects.
Despite the difficulties, interesting, bright, scalable products are being implemented in the regions of Russia. A successful case was shared by the partners of the “Masters of Hospitality” competition – representatives of the Project Office for the Development of Tourism and Hospitality in Moscow. They spoke about the methodology of the capital's educational and tourism project “City of Discoveries”, which, in addition to Moscow, is already successfully used in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Tyumen and Voronezh regions. Over the 3 years of the project, 3.5 million schoolchildren took part in it.
“Educational tourism is an effective career guidance tool that develops practical skills in children and young people and supplements theoretical knowledge. It is important for us to develop such projects at the intersection of tourism and education. Educational tours to Moscow allow schoolchildren to get acquainted with various sectors and industries in the format of an interactive journey. For example, to better understand how the urban environment is developing, where digital technologies and knowledge in the field of ecology or energy are used,” – said the head of the tourism department of the Moscow City Tourism Committee, an expert of the “Masters of Hospitality” competition Irina Shilkina< /strong>.
Speaking about the prospects for the development of educational tourism, the speakers noted it in a conglomeration of industrial interactive tours and visits to traditional display facilities. Such a composition of the trip allows children to look at the region not only from the side of its history, but also learn about its current life and, perhaps, look for a place in it for themselves.