Cultural travel involves immersing oneself in local customs and activities, often organized by small travel agencies. Travelers stay with locals, eat traditional food, and interact with local tour guides. Knowledge of local customs is important, especially when visiting religious sites. Cultural travel is popular among academics and non-academics seeking to escape their daily routine.
Cultural travel involves people experiencing aspects of the local culture while visiting different places. On standard vacations, travelers can visit historic sites and sample some local foods, but they can also eat at international restaurants and keep up to date with their country’s affairs by watching television or reading foreign newspapers. People engaged in cultural travel seek to immerse themselves in local customs and activities and make a conscious effort to detach themselves from things that are associated with their home nation.
Some travel agencies organize cultural trips; these trips normally involve small groups of individuals so that participants can spend their time mostly with the local inhabitants of the destination they are visiting. In many cases, travelers stay with local families or stay in small guesthouses or inns that are not generally frequented by foreign visitors. Some cultural travel trips include pre-booked meals at restaurants and cafes that serve traditional local food rather than foreign dishes. In other cases, travelers stay in rented houses or apartments that contain ovens and other cooking equipment so that travelers can buy food from local shops and prepare their own dishes.
Many tour companies employ tour guides who are fluent in many languages, but cultural travel companies often employ local tour guides who speak only their native language. Consequently, the burden of learning the local dialect falls on the travellers, and many people who go on these trips enjoy practicing their language skills by interacting with the locals. Cultural holidays are often organized in destinations that don’t typically attract large numbers of foreign visitors, meaning that attendees have no choice but to embrace the local culture.
Before embarking on cultural trips, travelers are usually given some background on local beliefs, practices and traditions. People who eat at a restaurant that caters to foreign tourists may not need to know local customs, but people who visit restaurants where tourists rarely visit may need to know local customs to avoid confusing or upsetting their guests acting in might not seem acceptable to the locals. Many cultural tourism trips involve visits to religious sites, requiring travelers to show the appropriate level of reverence as they visit sacred sites or interact with religious leaders.
Academics use cultural travel trips to gain knowledge of other nations’ customs and traditions. For the non-academic, cultural holidays offer travelers the opportunity to escape the normal daily grind. While many academics and non-academics go on formal trips, savvy cultural travelers often visit remote places on their own and without having made any advanced plans.
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