Deconstructing transformations: Educational travellers’ cross-cultural transformative experiences

Abstract

Transformative travel experiences are crucial in the next normal, given their powerful implications of generating uplifting changes in travellers. These can be changes to how travellers perceive themselves or other societies. This research provides insight into the transformative experiences of educational travellers in Australia. Educational travellers, like international students, are significant contributors to the social and economic sustainability of destinations but are often understudied and neglected due to their unique positionality of being neither visitors nor migrants. Using an interpretive, phenomenological paradigm, this study uses a qualitative method to uncover, deconstruct and understand educational travellers' holistic transformative experiences. The findings reveal educational travellers' motivations and the diverse experiences that trigger transformations. The article then examines the transformative process and outcomes, highlighting how educational travellers experience a knowledge transformation, whether in their personal competencies or destination understanding, resulting in transformations to themselves (psychological) or in their attitudes towards others (social). The findings also reveal cross-cultural differences, with Asian and Hispanic educational travellers gaining more robust destination understanding and social transformations than European educational travellers. Finally, the study provides theoretical and practical insight into how educational travellers' experiences can be facilitated and how future research may expand the exploration of educational travellers’ experiences.