Education travel tours are no longer restricted to students who want to spend part of an academic year or a summer abroad while receiving exchange credits. They are also available to tourists of all ages who wish to obtain hands-on knowledge of a subject that is connected to the location that they will visit as part of their educational tour packages.
Language immersion courses are a time honored concept in education travel tours. Telecommuting can allow for learning a language in its native environment while keeping up with work back home, but usually language immersion is marketed to students or retirees due to the length of time necessary to learn a new language.
International tours focusing on history are another popular type of educational travel tours. Here, traditional sightseeing takes a back seat to intensive exploration of particular areas that are connected to the history of the place being visited. Specific historical tours such as Renaissance tours and Ming dynasty tours are offered to tourists, and they are led by academic experts who specialize in the place and time being covered by the tour.
Archaeological digs in Israel and Egypt have always been available, but now archaeological experts lead tours to the birthplaces of the earliest ancestors of modern man, such as Kenya, as well as to South America where Mayan ruins are literally covered by Conquistador and other more modern structures. These tours tend to last one to three weeks and are available during typical summer and winter vacation periods.