Edu Walks, Tourism And Entrepreneurs

Education as a centre for knowledge creation is imperative for the overall development of the cluster, region and society at large. It must have the tinge of experiential learning by powerful self-learnt observation methods. ‘Edu Walk’ is one powerful tool to enhance this form of knowledge creation which helps entrepreneurs in deciphering the real world and its complex situations providing fresh thoughts for applying design thinking, making ‘socially conscious’ choices. In current over-enthused ‘screen times’ the education system has been led through digital classrooms. Yet it becomes imperative to undertake ‘Edu Walk’ for discovering oneself both for career transitions or simply improve the quality of life.

In the tourism sector, the education system should offer professional and practical skill-building activities on the themes of future travel scenarios. This will bring a positive effect for tourism businesses to start onboarding people, train them and developing unique products. It is important to understand the role of the public and private sectors in generating employability and demonstrating successful business models and creating jobs. These job creations through tourism activities can build sustainable and resilient businesses, which can indirectly stimulate local economies. Education in tourism in the form of ‘Edu Walk’ could offer an on-ground understanding of changing customer demands channelised through ‘experiential delivery in tourism’.

The dynamics of the tourism business are evolving every day since the pandemic has hit the sector. Safety measures introduced to contain the spread of the virus are primarily social distancing, mask, vaccination further brings the restriction to operate tour and activity businesses in a physical manner. The entrepreneurs in tourism must get familiar with new-age leisure management, event leadership, culture display, story living, sustainable practices, and marketing for unprecedented certainties. The opportunity here is to get vaccinated and go outdoors with teams on an ‘Edu walk’ and re-skill on soft services to know real-time future attitudes travellers.

The contours of tourism business by ‘tourpreneurs’ are different from tourism business led by the established names in the industry. The tour facilitators, guides and agents bring a sense of innovativeness which keeps the itineraries engaged with more of ‘eq encounters’ for the travellers. The responsible tourism products have to get harmonized into ‘pure experiences’ and be consistent in delivery in post-Covid19 scenarios. 

There is a rapid growth in India’s travel &tourism sector and there was a significant jump in international rankings of India’s enormous potential in the sector until the pandemic hit. Though the transactions have come to a halt, this is transformation time for enforcing disruptive changes, once the markets open for travelling. Until and unless the tourism industry builds capacity, new products (based on new normal) will become less competitive to the changing definition of travel.

Tourism product creation and positioning opportunities can propel India among the top-ranked tourism destinations in the world. There is a deluge of opportunities waiting to be capitalised upon. The visible opportunities seen on ‘Edu Walk’ are cultural preservation, natural resource management, waste management, corporate and social activities. The intellectual linkages through networking events, ‘India city discovery’ and mentorship can provide experiential learning for host communities. The sustainable outcomes can be driven by data management and the full digitization of ‘India resources’ developed for revenue growth. Tourism incubators and accelerators have to bring experiential learning situations to boost the quality of competitiveness striking a balance between the environmental, economic and social dimensions. The incubator programs such as ‘Sustainable Achievements Championing Heritage Induced Network’ offer support to tourism enthusiasts to operate meaningful India experiences under travel and tourism businesses and bring sustainability, adaptation quickly and decisively.

Diversifying the business visually and on-ground requires substantial investments. An investment without competent resources is tragic. In the present times of lockdown, virtual exploration options brought several new concepts to rebuild travellers’ trust but could not replace the sensory feelings gained from actual travelling. The present times are suitable to create a deeper understanding of travel services and bring academic influence with non-classroom training to enable communities towards becoming 'Atma Nirbhar’ (Self-Reliant). 

Tourism in India has traditionally been driven by domestic visitors and it is important for entrepreneurs to understand their target audience. Itinerary fulfilments and feedback ratings are dependent on customer experiences and it is important to understand the segments before aggregating the host communities for promoting travel and tourism services. There are many programs across the globe that teaches hospitality and tourism subjects and focus on preparing students to become entrepreneurs through a combination of theory and practice. The practical understanding of the business can be enhanced by joining programs such as ‘VEDIKA (Visually Exchanging Destination Information Knowledge-Action)’ to gain wider perspectives on social and economic aspects of tourism services.

‘Edu Walks’ offers a ‘culture insider’ attitude and ‘place sense’ by identified pit-stops and does have the potential for generating local economic benefits. Aligned with the incubator model the entrepreneurs can learn from tourism courses to become facilitators, guides and travel agents. As quoted by John Steinbeck “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” 

Dr Sachin Bansal

Guest Author The author is the Founder and Chief Explorer® of ‘City Explorers Private Limited, India’ and with two decades of experience, he has multiple flagships functional in the arena of community impact and destination product creation within tourism industry. As a destination branding specialist, he has coined the conceptual acronyms and led the co-creation through ‘Experiential Delivery in Tourism (EDiT)™’ and ‘Resonating Experiential Delivery Outcome (REDO)™’. For IP related enquiry or for more information can reach Dr. Sachin Bansal on help@cityexplorers.