Promoting tourism education in MENA countries: geopolitical implications.

Abstract

Tourism development across the Middle East and North Africa is mostly based on low cost and mass beach leisure. This kind of tourism development generated, already in 1980s, a rapid conversion of the whole of the Mediterranean coast into a pleasure “periphery of Europe”. Despite this trend, a different scenario emerged already in the 1990s with the increasing of interests in the development of territorial resources and cultural heritage sites for tourism. This new development has been relevant in the process of Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, particularly for the social and cultural basket that includes the higher education policy of the European Union. But the current European malaise and the developments in the post-Arab Spring countries could transform Euro-Mediterranean relations. In order to open new windows of opportunity, a reshaping of the Erasmus Mundus program can be crucial.