Intangible cultural heritage and management of educational tourism: An experiential learning approach

Travel has been advocated as a fortifying ground for experiential learning that can engage individuals in numerous experiences through the observation of the destination society and culture. In spite of the vast literature available about the link between tourism and experiential learning outcomes, there are limited studies that gauge educational tourists familiarity with the intangible cultural heritage of their host communities. Particularly, this study focuses on local food, which is known as a marker of the destination culture and an intangible heritage that plays an inevitable role in almost any tourism experience. Correspondingly, the current exploratory study took an experiential learning approach to understand educational tourists knowledge about local foods in Cyprus. The findings of the research revealed that educational tourists have very meager knowledge of local foods. The discussion is accordingly provided.