Türkiye as a Tourist Destination from the Perspective of International Educational Tourists

Abstract

Scientific, social and cultural events within the scope of educational tourism are important promotional activities for both universities and tourism. In this context, such events benefit the promotion of the country, universities and the tourism industry. The studies in the literature mainly focused on students within the scope of educational tourism. The sample of this study consists of people working at higher education institutions who travel internationally within the scope of Erasmus events as a product of educational tourism. In this context, it was aimed to evaluate Türkiye as a touristic destination through the eyes of educators who came to Amasya in May and June 2023 within the scope of staff week events. In the study in which qualitative research method and semi-structured interview technique was used and 21 educational tourists from 9 countries participated in the research. A word cloud was created using the Maxqda 24 program. According to the results of the analysis, it was determined that the concepts of “people”, “hospitality”, “history” and “cultures” were mainly prominent. In addition, according to the results of the research, it was determined that the difficulty encountered was the “foreign language” problem.