Through an analysis of guidebook representations of the travel experience in Aboriginal Australia, this chapter reveals that the three selected guidebooks shape and frame particular travel pursuits as offering the traveller an alternative experience of the destination and of indigenous people and...

This chapter explores the exclusions/inclusions of volunteer tourism and examines the phenomenon of solidarity and reality tours, in which people from developing countries are enabled to travel and interact with people in developed communities through church-based, activist and developmental...

This chapter presents the findings of qualitative research undertaken with community hosts and 12 Australian volunteers working on a marae (Maori village or traditional meeting place) in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand. The chapter examines the nature of the volunteer tourism experience in...

This chapter examines the motivations of British gap year travellers to volunteer in Latin America. It is based on interviews with 50 volunteers who have chosen to participate in structured travel experiences as arranged by UK-based organizations. The emergent themes are divided into three...

This chapter examines volunteer travel for the opportunities it provides in opening up 'psychic', 'social', and 'symbolic' spaces. In particular, it is argued that volunteer travel is a manifestation of young backpackers' desires for otherness and authenticity and expectations for the accumulation...

This case study (i) describes the volunteer tourism programme of Kenya's Taita Discovery Centre (TDC) and its contribution to community development and wildlife conservation; (ii) describes TDC's community volunteers and wildlife volunteers and identifies similarities and differences between them;...

This chapter presents a case study of volunteer tourists' motivations for 'holidaying' at the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project (GRP) in Phuket, Thailand. Results show that each volunteer was motivated by more than one type of four motivation categories: 'altruism'; 'travel'; 'career development'; and...

This chapter explores the role that sending organizations play in developing and maintaining volunteer tourism programmes (VTPs) that benefit both the volunteer tourists and the host organizations. Two case studies are presented: the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) and the...

This chapter examines how NGO-operated study tours in Cuba, which include seminars on development issues in association with visits to community projects, lead to a process whereby tourists become actual agents of development. Thus, NGO study tours in Cuba shed light on the instrumental outcomes of ...

This chapter introduces the rationale and objectives of the UNWTO TedQual Volunteers Programme, highlighting the role of knowledge management and specifically knowledge transfer and knowledge-sharing in assisting developing countries and destinations to create a sustainable tourism sector. Case...