VOLUNTEER TOURISM:
(A CASE OF ORANGUTAN FOUNDATION)
INTRODUCTION:
Volunteer tourism is one of the emerging tourism industries in Australia. Initially, it was said to be a form of deep eco-tourism. Now, it is considered tourism that fosters environmental and social positive outcomes, offering the tourists an opportunity to support their host community (Wearing and McGehee, 2013).
In this report, the author will conceptualize volunteer tourism and its benefits and develop an STP plan for The Orangutan Foundation to secure the lives of orangutans.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Volunteering is the activity in which people engage to benefit or help strangers. The volunteerism motivation mainly focuses on the meeting needs, fulfilling motives, psychological and social functions that are being served through volunteer work (Dolnicar and Randle, 2007).
Presently, volunteerism is contributing around $ 2 billion each year from around 1.6 million tourists (Lovelock, 2011). The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US records that around 63.8 million individuals have taken part in volunteerism from September 2013 to 2014. There are various advantages of volunteerism (Sinha, 2014):
- Protective Function: It helps the individuals to cope up with the conflicts and inner anxieties.
- Social Function: It helps the individuals to contribute and collaborate with the social groups that they value
- Career Function: It helps individuals to gain experiences that boosts their career
- Enhancement Function: It permits individuals to connect with sociological and psychological development and increase self-esteem
- Value function: Individuals volunteer to act on or express values they value
- Understanding function: This gives an opportunity to the people to increase their knowledge and also practice and develop specific skills.
According to the ABS 2010 survey, around 6.1 million people, or 36% of the Australian population aged 18 years or more, have taken part in volunteerism, and women (38%) were slightly more than men (34%).
The survey found that people 45-54 years old are more interested in volunteering and in recreational activities and sports.
This shows that volunteer tourism is the fast growing trend in the tourism industry (Volunteeringaustralia.org, 2014).
However, it is to be noted this tourism have some drawbacks that has to be taken care of. The issues are in identifying the actual needs that will be served by the volunteer tourists. Further lack of methods for choosing the volunteering opportunities might hamper this area.
As per the opinion of McGehee and Clemons (2008), the STP (Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning) process helps to promote a particular products of an organization is a specific market to specific customers.
According Pike (2012), the STP process helps to maximize the impact of marketing activities on product. Then Coren and Gray (2012) supported by saying the STP process helps to influence the buying behavior of the customers.
According to Natter et al. (2008), segmentation can be defined as the process of splitting the market into groups with similar needs and characteristics.
Targeting is the process of selecting a particular segment to deliver the product using either the focused targeting strategy, undifferentiated targeting strategy or the Differentiated targeting strategy
STP PLAN
Segmenting: The key factors that The Orangutan Foundation of Volunteer Tourism should focus on to carry out the segmentation process are customer type, motivational factors, and demographic profile.
The two major segments that the foundation should focus on are: Young Volunteers who are studying zoology or are interested to start their career related to animals world aged 15-30 years and the Mature Vounteers ages 50 years and above.
| Target market | Age range | Travel experience | Motivation factors |
| Young volunteers interested in animal world or studying zoology | 15-30 years | 0 to 4 international trips in wildlife sanctuaries in 1 year | Interaction with people
Improve Knowledge, skills and attitude Fun factor Developing experience to boost career |
| Mature volunteers | 50years and above | Atleast 7 international visits in last 2years
|
Supporting the organization
Contributing to the society Experiencing new cultures |
Targeting: Differentiated Targeting Strategy can be adopted by the foundation to target the two segments. To target the young volunteer, the whole package should be designed in manner that it helps them to gain knowledge about wildlife preservation from their trip.
A special tourism package should be designed so that young people can go in groups of 5-6 to gain experience and have fun, too.
Similarly, to tap mature volunteers, the tour package should be developed in a way that would help them interact with other cultures, contribute effectively to society, and have fun. The package duration should be planned based on their age.
Positioning: Orangutan Foundation Services’s positioning strategy would focus on three fundamental elements: the brand personality, the emotive expression, and the destination attributes.
The brand personality included with this tour would be spirited, affable and proud so the tourists can actually contribute to the society and the local community people and also conserve and extend the economy.
Further the emotive expression include creating and experience strong bonding with the family, delight feeling and also contribution to the society.
For young volunteers this trip would give a new experience by serving the wild animals and gain knowledge to link their theories with the practical life.
Thirdly, the main destination attributes would include supporting the society, differentiating self with other tourists, having fun, gaining knowledge, interacting with other culture people and also a nice holiday trip.
Keeping all these three elements, the foundation can position them as a low cost travelling agency which is involved with volunteerism to benefit the society and economy and also promoting conservation of wild species of orangutans.
CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, the presented report has discussed the marketing strategic aspect of volunteer tourism of the Orangutans Foundation.
The literature review section of this report has reviewed the statistics of volunteer tourism and also the concept of STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning).
The report consist of a segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy that would help the foundation to tap the consumer segment that is the mature volunteer and the young volunteer.
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