Traveling to most people, especially those dedicated to a spartan life due to religious or cultural affiliations see traveling and tourism as nothing but pleasure. They consider it a consumerist propaganda, a way to hoop around instead of focusing on work and other more productive engagements.
This is obviously is a weak clamor and is almost certainly false. While it might be true some tourists use travel as a means to elude responsibilities and to satisfy their "ill-founded Luddite hysteria", traveling and tourism is educative.
This claim isn't far fetched as we don't need to do so many google searches to discover this fact. Just look around. Consider the people around you who have traveled and lived in different part of the world, you'll notice one common trait: they all appear to be enlightened. And nope I'm not only referring to pure academic achievements but also to basic human relationships, communication, social engagements, tolerance, confidence and so on.
Yes pleasure is another component of the experience but come to think of it, is life just about sitting in your local community with your people and never getting to know how other tribes, races, religions and cultures interact?
Traveling does build confidence. Meeting and interacting with people of different races, economic and educational strata also builds your self esteem.
Another merit of traveling is it aids self Discovery. You get to truly know yourself when you're presented with different situations of life whether pleasant or unpleasant. Until faced with demanding situations you might never discover your locked in strengths and weaknesses. As you tour your likely to get into some of these situations, some life threatening.
In summary, traveling and touring builds you physically, academically and physiologically, while still having fun.