Search results

Contents; About the Authors; Preface; List of Tables, Boxes and Figures; 1 Introduction; Beyond Experiences that Make a Difference; Historical Foundations of Alternative Tourism; Volunteer Tourism as the Ultimate Alternative Tourism?; Selves in the Tourism Experience; Ecotourism Operators, Communities and Volunteer Tourism; The Growth in Volunteer Tourism; Volunteer Tourism and Pro-poor Tourism; Book Outline; 2 Alternative Tourism Experiences; Introduction; Alternative Tourism; Situating Volunteer Tourism in the Context of the Alternative Tourism Experience

This book provides an overview of the phenomenon of volunteer tourism, its sources and its development as a concept; and focuses on the potential positive social and environmental benefits of volunteer tourism, and the prerequisites for a successful experience. Chapter 2 examines alternative tourism experiences and how tourists themselves construct them, then conceptualizes the concept of volunteer tourism within those boundaries of alternative tourism and, subsequently, mass tourism. Chapter 3 examines one of the 60 environmental projects undertaken by Youth Challenge International (YCI) between 1991 and 1995, which provides a microsocial context for the examination of the Santa Elena Rainforest Reserve experience of YCI participants. Chapter 4 presents the data obtained from the in-depth interviews with participants from Australia, over the 3 years of the Costa Rica project. Chapter 5 examines the elements of ecotourism, volunteerism and serious leisure in conjunction with the themes that emerged from the participant's definitions of the experience and links them to related information in the interviews and the literature. Chapter 6 focuses on the centrality of the natural environment. Chapter 7 explores how volunteer tourism experiences actually contribute to the development of self, framing the experience in the very words of the participants. Chapter 8 examines the growing convergence of aims between local communities and the tourism sector. Chapter 9 argues that the alternative tourism experiences should not be reduced to a dialogic model of impossible realities related to dialectal materialism. Instead, its understanding should be grounded in human interactions and the concrete social reality in which it takes place.

This paper highlights that tourism, due to the fact it is a multi-faceted activity and by implication its management has similar multiple contexts, often leads to the exclusion of many who are part of that tourism context. One area that has been left on the fringes of tourism is how contemporary tourism management has "othered" those regarded as being removed from the neoliberal business foundation of tourism. One such group is the host communities in developing countries. The failure to involve and engage with host communities and develop collaboration in the process of planning and management for tourism is and has in the past been detrimental to the sustainability of tourism. In many cases, host communities have been ignored by the industry, with few or no mechanisms or processes put in place to enable them to participate in the management of tourism. This paper presents an overview of how this engagement of host communities can expand the market for tourism and lead to more satisfying visitor experiences, enhance the sustainability of these experiences and, thus, be considered good management practice within the industry. The paper examines how to engage in these practices and create processes that are both enabling for communities and incorporate research techniques that move beyond the very limited monocultural attempts undertaken by the majority of tourism enterprises today. In widening the involvement of the host community, we turn to mechanisms for engagement to provide a platform to demonstrate how this can be done to provide better management practice. In doing so, we extend the scope of engagement to involve those previously considered to be outside of mainstream tourism enterprises, and present an argument that, if sustainability is to move beyond economic and environmental Western constructs to embrace social sustainability, changing global values require tourism management to adopt more inclusive ways of practice and management principles.