Volunteer Tourism – Literature Review
Volunteerism is becoming one of the buzzwords in the tourism industry. Previously, this form was considered to be eco-tourism but presently it is considered to be a type of tourism that fosters both social and environmental positive outcomes.
This type of tourism offers tourists the opportunity to boost their careers by supporting the community. Volunteerism has started receiving some academic attention, positioning this tourism as an emerging area (Coghlan and Noakes, 2012).
Scholars and researchers have defined volunteer tourism in various ways. One of the most common definitions was coined by Wearing (2001). He states that “volunteerism applies to those tourists who systematically volunteer in their travelling by undertaking activities that include alleviating or aiding poverty in society.
In this perspective, volunteer tourism includes the recreation and leisure component aligned with the tourism, with the aspiration to solve social issues like parentless childhood, gender discrimination, poverty etc.
Since volunteer tourism is associated with present-life politics, people, particularly young adults, look for their personal identity by seeking to make a unique difference in the world (Tomazos, 2010).
Volunteer Tourism is an activity that helps tourists help or benefit needy strangers. According to McGhee (2014), volunteerism is restricted to the nature of occurrence. This tourism type serves as a learning environment that reinforces and extends self-improvement.
On the other hand, Hammersley (2013) states that volunteer tourism is a different type of tourism that enormously depends on the “collaboration of cross-segment” that includes many players, such as the private sector, society, and civil government.
Volunteer tourism has suggested various benefits to all the social actors involved in the process. The volunteers mainly contribute work, money and much time for benefiting the foreign community. The most highlighted rewards are the intrinsic rewards that the volunteer tourists gain by interactive experience with the local community.
These intrinsic rewards help people gain self-awareness, which alters their lifestyle. Coren and Gray (2012) say that volunteer Tourists distinguish themselves from other tourists as they pursue close, face-to-face interactions with almost everyone in the community.
McGehee and Andereck (2009) say that volunteer tourists are generally not viewed as normal tourists. Other tourists or local residents feel that these volunteers are different as they often require sustainable food, transportation, and accommodations.
Tourism motivation is one of the significant states of mind that effectively disposes actors to travel. The travel motivation of an individual occurs when they realize that their travelling experience would fulfill their certain needs. According to the research of McGhee & Santos (2005), volunteer tourists increase friendships and social networks in their experiences of volunteer tourism give illumination, enlightening new encounters, and individual changes to their lives.
Volunteer tourists in Broad’s (2003) research learnt all the more about their own character and developed aptitudes and confidence to handle testing circumstances, such as “working in an outside society and atmosphere, managing their feelings and working with others.”
The volunteer tourists got to be more loose what’s more substance and took a look at the world distinctively as a consequence of their encounters (Broad, 2003).
As per Stebbins and Graham (2004), volunteer travelers see their encounters as remunerating, giving them a feeling of fulfillment and profound individual satisfaction, and they profit from their volunteer work.
Through these past studies, volunteer tourism appears to offer the possibility of changing a traveler’s perceptions about society, their self-personality, their qualities, and their regular lives. Wearing’s (2002) volunteer tourism definition says that “for different reasons” a vacationer can take an interest in a volunteer tourism trip, which appears to perceive that volunteer tourists are most certainly not all spurred essentially to help other people.
Wearing (2004) recognizes that despite the fact that the overlying rationale of most volunteer travelers is benevolence, the experience is generally anticipated to be bi-parallel, implying that the experience would have liked to help not just the volunteer vacationers’ self-awareness but additionally absolutely and straightforwardly the social, regular, and/or monetary situations of the host community.
Brown and Lehto’s (2005) exploration found that volunteer tourists have four primary intentions: education and family bonding, cultural immersion, seeking camaraderie with other volunteers and making a difference by giving support.
In their study, members needed inundation in the nearby society in trusts it would prompt associations with the neighborhood individuals, and the inundation did lead to associations with the hosts for a few members.
Interestingly, ‘giving back and having any kind of effect’ is the main intention, and it does not appear that the sightseers anticipated something as an exchange; then again, ‘giving back and having any kind of effect’ gave the volunteer tourists a feeling of reason, which appears to satisfy their wants for vanity.
According to Mcgehee and Clemmons (2008) opinion, the traveling experience becomes more interesting through cooperation and comparative mentality. This is one of the major emotional motivators that makes the traveling to create strong relations and bonding.
From the above discussion on different opinions of previous scholars, it is quite clear that volunteer tourism helps the tourists to be more responsible to the society by encouraging them to conduct social activities.
This volunteer tourism helps increase a single target’s profit and efficiency. The literature review clearly shows that the goal of volunteer tourists is to facilitate their interaction with the community and help them improve their personal and social development.
REFERENCES
Broad, S. (2003). Living the Thai Life—A Case Study of Volunteer Tourism at the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, Thailand. Tourism Recreation Research, 28(3), pp.63-72.
Brown, S. and Lehto, X. (2005). Travelling with a Purpose: Understanding the Motives and Benefits of Volunteer Vacationers. Current Issues in Tourism, 8(6), pp.479-496.
Coghlan, A. and Noakes, S. (2012). Towards an Understanding of the Drivers of Commercialization in the Volunteer Tourism Sector. Tourism Recreation Research, 37(2), pp.123-131.
Coren, N. and Gray, T. (2011). Commodification of Volunteer Tourism: a Comparative Study of Volunteer Tourists in Vietnam and in Thailand. International Journal of Tourism Research, 14(3), pp.222-234.
Hammersley, L. (2013). Volunteer tourism: building effective relationships of understanding. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22(6), pp.855-873.
McGehee, N. (2014). Volunteer tourism: evolution, issues and futures. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22(6), pp.847-854.
McGehee, N. and Andereck, K. (2009). Volunteer tourism and the “voluntouredâ€: the case of Tijuana, Mexico. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 17(1), pp.39-51.
McGehee, N. and Clemmons, D. 2008, An outgrowth of the 2004 voluntourism think tank a joint effort of Los Ninos Inc. Paper presented at the Educational Travel Conference, George Washington University
McGehee, N. and Santos, C. (2005). Social change, discourse and volunteer tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 32(3), pp.760-779.
Stebbins, R. and Graham, M. (2004). Volunteering as leisure/leisure as volunteering. Wallingford, UK: CABI Pub.
Tomazos, K. (2010). Volunteer tourism – an ambiguous marketing phenomenon. Innovative Marketing, 6(4).
Wearing, S. (2001). Volunteer Tourism: Experiences That Make a Difference. Oxon: CABI.
Wearing, S. (2002). Re-centering the self in volunteer tourism. In G. Dann (Ed.), The tourist as a metaphor of the social world (pp. 237e262). Wallingford: CABI Publishing
Wearing, S. (2004).Examining Best Practice in Volunteer Tourism. Volunteering as Leisure/Leisure as Volunteering. R. A. Stebbins and R. T. Graham. (eds) Wallingford, Ox., UK.