Volunteer Vacationers and What Research Can Tell Us About Them

Volunteer Vacationers and What Research Can Tell Us About Them

The growing trend called "volunteer vacationing" reflects the increase in short-term and family volunteerism reported in national surveys in the United States. An increasing number of organizations, public and private, cater to these volunteers with packaged service trips. Drawing on current research into the characteristics of successful volunteer programs, this article offers some preliminary hypotheses about the motivations of volunteer vacationers, the benefits and drawbacks of the "volunteer vacationer" model, and the ways in which programs can take advantage of this trend. Organizations welcoming volunteer vacationers have surmounted some difficulties shared by many volunteer programs, including how to balance a volunteer's need for intrinsic and extrinsic rewards, how to train and manage large numbers of short-term workers, and how to minimize staff resistance in the process. We would be well served by learning more about these effective programs. The rewards may include healthy retention rates among volunteers who are willing to pay handsomely for the experience.

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Sat, 12/15/2001
A grand website -- congratulations! I am a journalist, magazine editor, and guidebook author who has specialized for the past eight years in researching and writing about "alternative travel", namely ecological, educational, cultural, and VOLUNTEER vacations. I do this particularly in media addressing the mature (50+) market and women travelers 35+ which are the two most significant alternative travel audiences in the world. I see you have one pretty all-inclusive article on volunteer vacationing in issue 2 -- or voluntourism, as I prefer to label it...let's syphon off an ever-growing segment of the travel market which has money to spend and time and energy to devote to making the world a better place. My broad-ranging experience interacting with my readers tells me that raising the profile of this type of vacationing is mostly all it takes to raise the enthusiasm level -- there is a great hunger out there for meaningful travel. No question that it also makes the person who gets hooked on voluntourism a mentally healthier individual. But then I know I am preaching to the converted! I invite you to review my Travel with a Challenge website, www.travelwithachallenge.com, with particular attention to the pages on my recently published GUIDEBOOK ("Travel Unlimited: Uncommon Adventures for the Mature Traveler" which is all about alternative travel) and on the MAGAZINE which features fresh articles and columns on the theme of ecological, educational, cultural and volunteer vacations worldwide.

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