Offers an insight into how volunteer tourism is growing and developing. This title includes case studies from researchers in the field which explore the experiences of the volunteer tourist and the relationships between volunteers and host communities and commercial, non-commercial and government entities involved in volunteer tourism.

Just a generation ago the notion that holidays should be invested with ethical and political significance would have sounded odd. Today it is part of the lifestyle political landscape. Volunteer tourism is indicative of the growth of lifestyle strategies intended to exhibit care and responsibility towards others less fortunate, strategies aligned closely with developing one’s ethical identity and sense of global responsibility. It sits alongside telethons, pay-per-click, Fair Trade and ethical consumption generally as a way to “make a difference”. Volunteer tourism involves a personal mission to address the political question of development. It draws upon the private virtues of care and responsibility and disavows political narratives beyond this. Critics argue that this leaves the volunteers as unwitting carriers of damaging neoliberal or postcolonial assumptions, whilst advocates see it as offering creative and practical ways to build a new ethical politics. By contrast, this volume analyses volunteer tourism as indicative of a retreat from public politics into the realm of private experience, and as an expression of diminished political and moral agency. This thought provoking book draws on development, political and sociological theory and is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in the phenomenon of volunteer tourism and the politics of lifestyle that it represents.

Volunteer Tourism is one of the major growth areas in contemporary tourism, where tourists for various reasons seek alternative goodwill experiences and activities. To meet this demand there has been a surge in volunteer programmes offered in range of destinations organized by a variety of charities and tour operators which is predicted to continue to grow in the future. Volunteer Tourism provides an in-depth analysis of the complex issues associated with traditional and contemporary volunteer tourism. Reflecting the growth in this phenomenon, this book provides a cohesive collection of chapters written from a range of international expert scholars and researchers. The theoretically rich, practically applied and empirically grounded contributions are based on current and diverse research in the area. This groundbreaking volume explores topics which have not been addressed in the literature before, such as the impact on host communities, introducing new areas and ideas to the field. The diverse range of themes are identified and addressed, including volunteer tourism and sustainability to, uniquely, the examination of volunteer tourism stakeholders – volunteers themselves, the host-to-guest exchange, and the organizations – and management of volunteers. These themes are examined in a range of international case studies, demonstrating the wide range of issues associated with volunteer tourism. This volume is a timely addition offering an innovative approach to the area. Volunteer Tourism will be of interest to both students and researchers interested in tourism, leisure and development, as well as non-academics, practitioners, NGOs government officials at all levels.

This first full length treatment of the role of morality in tourism examines how the tourism encounter is also fundamentally a moral encounter. Drawing upon interdisciplinary perspectives, leading and new authors in the field address topics that range from volunteer tourism to fertility tourism to reveal new insights into the ways tourism encounters are implicated in, and contribute to, broader moral reconfigurations in Western and non-Western contexts. Illustrating the role of power and power relations in tourism encounters within different political, economic, environmental and cultural contexts, the authors in this anthology analyse, theoretically and empirically, the implications of the privileging of some moralities at the expense of others. Key themes include the moral consumption of tourism experiences, embodiment in tourism encounters, environmental moralities as well as methodological aspects of morality in tourism research. Crossing disciplinary and chronological boundaries, Moral Encounters in Tourism provides a much-anticipated overview of this new interdisciplinary terrain and offers possible routes for new research on the intersection of morality and tourism studies.

Peace through tourism refers to a body of analysis which suggests tourism may contribute to cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and even peace between communities and nations. What has been largely missing to date is a sustained critique of the potential and capacities of tourism to foster global peace. This timely volume fills this void, by providing a critical look at tourism in order to ascertain its potential as a social force to promote human rights, justice and peace. It presents an alternative characterisation of the possibilities for peace through tourism: embedding an understanding of the phenomenon in a deep grounding in multi-disciplinary perspectives and envisioning tourism in the context of human rights, social justice and ecological integrity. Such an approach engages the ambivalence and dichotomy of views held on peace tourism by relying on a pedagogy of peace. It integrates a range of perspectives from scholars from many disciplinary backgrounds, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), tourism industry operators and community, all united by an interest in critical approaches to understanding peace through tourism. Additionally diverse geo-political contexts are represented in this book from the USA, India, Japan, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, the Koreas, Indonesia, East Timor and Indigenous Australia. Written by leading academics, this groundbreaking book will provide students, researchers and academics a sustained critique of the potential and capacities of tourism to foster global peace.

Summary: This book revisits and further develops the topics and themes covered in Volunteer Tourism: Experiences That Make a Difference, written over 10 years ago. Concentrating on the experience of the volunteer tourist and the host community, this new edition builds on the view of volunteer tourism as a positive and sustainable form of tourism to examine a broader spectrum of behaviours and experiences and consider critically where the volunteer tourist experience both compliments and collides with host communities, using multiple case studies. The book has nine chapters and a subject index.

The book is a landmark volume which examines perplexing tourism debates such as the relevance of mass tourism, climate change, authenticity, tourism and poverty and slow tourism. Multidisciplinary in content, it covers applied aspects of sociology, anthropology, humanities and biosciences. The book is unique in its presentation and style and will be an essential resource for scholars, academics and practitioners.

Volunteers make important contributions across the spectrum of event settings, most visibly at high profile mega events such as the Olympic Games they are volunteers are lauded as ‘Games makers’, ’unsung heroes’ and the like. Less visibly volunteers are the heart and soul of community events and festivals, often undertaking multi-faceted roles from event leadership through to operations and ensuring that these celebrations are made possible in the absence of big budgets and professional event staff. This book is the first to showcase and advance international research into the volunteering experience at events, drawing on the work of key scholars in this field. Events of all sizes benefit from volunteer support but event volunteering research is frequently case study-based and individually these cases make a limited impact. This text brings together cases from around the world, specifically including those that expand theoretical and methodological boundaries. It features mega events like the 2012 Olympics and the 2011 Rugby World Cup, alongside music festivals and sports events. New areas that are examined include the benefits of event volunteering for students, the role of volunteers in social enterprise events and new methodological approaches to researching this phenomenon, specifically ethnographic and cross-national studies. This innovative book acts as a global source of key information for practitioners and researchers, an important text for students of event management and will provide stimulus for further work in this emerging area.

This book discusses tourism niches as contested commodities that have grown and become part of the tourist setting in many destinations. Over time, they develop organically, and, in some cases, underground before they explode into the mainstream, and, more often than not, cause controversy. The text traces the roots of different tourism trends, using examples from both industry and existing studies, revealing the importance of understanding their key drivers, dynamics and impacts. It is in managers’ interest to monitor such trends and tourist pursuits as they cross over because they hold the potential to influence new markets, as destinations diversify their tourist offering. This volume explores a number of different tourism niches, including slum tourism, trophy hunting tourism, cosmetic surgery tourism, volunteer tourism, and sex tourism, to name but a few. It shows that the margins between contested commodity and mainstream acceptance are fluid and relative, becoming increasingly blurred. In this environment, it is easy for a seemingly marginal tourist pursuit to cross into the mainstream. What is pivotal in this emerging picture is that, as the understanding of each niche matures into the broader public’s consciousness, and supply grows, it becomes another experience that can be replicated, homogenised and sold. Turning these niches into tourism products requires enough understanding of them to be sold commercially and further segmented to benefit as many stakeholders as possible. In this reality, it is paramount that the tourism industry maintains an open mind and explores the potential of turning new trends into products for tourist consumption.

In this volume leading experts from different disciplines and diverse geographic regions discuss fundamental, often controversial topics in the field of tourism studies. The book attempts to understand, identify and analyse some of the perennial problems and challenges encountered by tourism researchers. The debates include topics such as the concept of the ‘tourist’, the long-term sustainability of tourism development, the growth of volunteer tourism and the vulnerability of tourism. Bringing together the collective wisdom of 37 renowned tourism scholars in a unique format, this is an important text for undergraduate and postgraduate students, tourism researchers and industry professionals.