Academic Tourism: a more sustainable tourism

Abstract

This paper tries to justify that academic tourism, due to its characteristics, is a more sustainable type of tourism than conventional tourism. For this reason, we have analysed academic tourism taking into account the three dimensions of the sustainable development: economic, environmental and social. The results demonstrate that academic tourism has relatively greater economic impact than conventional tourism, that its negative effects on the environment are not significant, and that it benefits the future generations, since it contributes to increase knowledge and interrelationship among students of different countries and cultures. In light of these results, policy implications are then discussed. We analyze the experience of European Erasmus students in Spanish universities for the period 2000-2010