Economic Impacts of Educational Tourism on Host Community. A Comparative Study in Famagusta and Lefke, North Cyprus

Educational Tourism plays an important role in the lives of host community. There are three types of impacts which affect their lives. Such as: economic, socio-cultural and environmental. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the hosts' perceptions on Educational Tourism development and to achieve broadened perspective of Edu - Tourism on economical concern of the host community of two regions of North Cyprus – Famagusta and Lefke. By comparing these two locations and level of impacts in each of them we will gather in-depth data which will help us to understand the path in which “younger” destination – Lefke will develop in future for educational tourism. To measure the impacts of Educational Tourism in Famagusta and Lefke, North Cyprus, data was collected from 24 host residents who lives in these regions. So, the sampling of our study was local people from different regions of Famagusta and Lefke, North Cyprus who lived there for more than 20 years, because in our opinion, those people are the ones who noticed the effects of development of educational tourism better than those who lived here smaller period of time. Qualitative data collection was used to collect the information via semi-structured interviews and face-to-face interactions with locals. The findings of our study revealed that most of the respondents benefit from Educational tourism development, although there are some negative impacts that were mentioned by interviewees. Most of the findings of this study are supported by the results of previous studies which were mentioned in literature part of the research. Keywords: Educational tourism, Economic impacts, Famagusta, Lefke, Northern Cyprus, Resident attitudes, EMU, EUL