State Regulation of Educational Tourism

The article reviews the peculiarities of educational tourism development in the regions of Russia. The article’s relevance is due to the increasing significance of educational tourism as the trend of inbound tourism development in Russia. Considering the significant educational potential of the regions, the actual task is also to evaluate the efficiency of its realization. The article aims to test the DEA methodology as the assessment tool of the potential implementation of educational tourism and state aid reasoning for its development considering regional features. The DEA method has significant advantages over other evaluation efficiency methods because it uses a set of input and output indexes to calculate integral index. Six “input” indicators indicating the potential of educational tourism development and one “output” indicator reflecting the tourist flow were selected. We used the input-oriented model, which allows us to assess the technological efficiency of educational tourism development and determine the fields for optimizing its management the management process of indexes characterizing the potential for educational tourism development. Additionally, we have chosen a model that considers the variable returns to scale (VRS). The cities of Moscow, Belgorod region, and Tula region are the prominent regions described by single efficiency according to the two models. It is necessary to optimize the input parameters to increase the efficiency of educational tourism development for other regions. The DEA method allowed us to identify fields for the usage optimization of the educational potential of the regions. Results may be valuable for the application by executive authorities.