Bibliografía Documental

If volunteer tourism is marketed as a mutually beneficial form of tourism, positively contributing to the lives of both tourists and host communities, it raises the question of who are the true beneficiaries of this activity. Instead of attempting to prescribe an ideal version of volunteer tourism in which each stakeholder benefits equally from the program, the potential benefits and negative effects to each major stakeholder in volunteer tourism will be discussed in this sub-section. Despite the variety of means by which a tourist can volunteer, be it through teaching English, improving community infrastructure or assisting with scientific data gathering, the underlying nature of volunteer tourism is generally accepted as providing direct benefits to host

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communities. Such volunteer projects are usually designed with the aim of providing longer-term benefits to the community at large, rather than just benefitting a single segment of the community (TIES 2012). In realising such benefits through volunteer tourism, the host community is able to leverage off resources that were previously unavailable to them.

On a social level, one of the main benefits is the cross-cultural interactions that inevitably result from living and working in close quarters with people of different cultures (Sin 2009). This form of interaction encourages a greater awareness of diversity in the host community as well as among volunteer tourists. While there are negative cross-cultural consequences such as the demonstration effect as discussed earlier, McIntosh and Zahra (2007) have also pointed out that the curiosity of outsiders in local cultures and customs can also strengthen the host community’s pride in their practices, thereby preserving these for future generations. Furthermore, Zahra and McGehee (2013) also reported that volunteers contributing to host communities inspired more people within these communities to get involved and stop waiting for government intervention.

Volunteer tourism programs generally have a central project which is the main focus of the trip. This project is one of the selling points of the program, a tangible contribution the volunteer tourist makes to the host community. Projects can range from the more labour-intensive – digging wells to provide freshwater for a village or building school buildings to house students – to the more knowledge-oriented, such as educating local midwives on sanitary practices to ensure safer births, or scientific data gathering. Well-intentioned as they may be, however, the execution of these projects is sometimes less than satisfactory, as was pointed out earlier. These can represent a long-term burden to the host community, particularly as volunteer tourists

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are typically short-term visitors who do not have to bear the negative consequences of failed projects (Sin 2010). This is particularly problematic if the host community learns to live with such projects on a regular basis, fostering an unhealthy dependency that prompts host communities to rely solely on volunteer tourists when a major project is to be executed. Such dependency has been criticised as another form of dominance which developed countries exert on developing countries, further advancing the argument that volunteer tourism is a form of neo-colonialism (Palacios 2010). Further to these unsatisfactory project conclusions, if volunteer tourists are invited into a project in place of employing and remunerating skilled, local labour, this presents a problem to the local economy as it removes a potential source of income for the host community (Guttentag 2009). Such a substitution can be detrimental in two ways – it can result in the unsatisfactory work as outlined above, and can cause unemployment in an economy of otherwise productive labour.

As has been pointed out previously factors that may be interpreted as beneficial to volunteer tourists include altruism, self-actualisation, heightened social awareness and intercultural learning. This diversity of motivations and benefits has been targeted by marketers, resulting in a tendency towards a commodification of volunteer tourism programs that pander to such motivations. To a certain extent, once may view participation in volunteer tourism programs as a first step towards fulfilling the anticipated experiential benefits. However, this could be counteracted by rationalisations of poverty through their experiences. While this may be a subconscious assuaging of guilt which is not apparent to the volunteer tourist, it may have longer term effects on the volunteer tourist’s personal development in the areas of social justice and equality (Sin 2010).

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Often neglected in the academic literature, sending organisations are fast attracting focus as one of the key stakeholders in the volunteer tourism process which plays a major role in determining the effectiveness of such programs and projects (Palacios 2010). Aside from their responsibilities in designing programs which are beneficial to both host communities and tourists, they are also tasked with leading the recruitment, trip reflections and re-integration of these tourists. As a central determinant of program design, sending organisations also stand to gain from volunteer tourism. For the not- for-profit segment of sending organisations, this is a prime opportunity to furthering their reputation and raise awareness for the causes they serve. It also functions as a tool for recruiting more volunteers, increasing contributions to their causes in source markets. This opportunity to promote the organisation is similarly extended to commercial enterprises which operate as sending organisations, regardless of whether they do it as their sole product or as part of their suite of offerings. Such commercial sending organisations are also afforded the chance to extend the positive perception generally associated with this form of tourism into their brand. It allows sending organisations to associate themselves with ethical business, which has proven to be a brand-enhancer in the minds of consumers (Kitchin 2003; Middlemiss 2003).

While it is idealistic to hope for a system in which volunteer tourism program design provides all the benefits and none of the detrimental aspects of volunteer tourism to all major stakeholders involved, there is still some way to go in ensuring that volunteer tourism programs effectively achieve their aims (Taplin, Dredge & Scherrer 2014). Despite the sometimes conflicting needs of beneficiaries, such as the desire for volunteer tourists to be involved only in particular projects while host communities may require a more realistic set of activities, there have been efforts by the industry to

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enhance these programs. One of the measures that is needed is a framework, voluntary or regulatory in nature, to guide the design and participation of volunteer tourism programs, contributing to their effectiveness while providing realistic expectations that potential volunteer tourists can look forward to (Ong et al. 2013). The conflicting requirements have been acknowledged in an iterative monitoring and evaluative framework proposed by Taplin, Dredge and Scherrer (2014), which takes into account stakeholders, organisations, markets and programs in order to improve the quality of volunteer tourism programs. Taplin, Dredge and Scherrer (2014) acknowledge that it is a value-laden process operating within an environment of uneven power relations, agendas and interests. The complicated nature of volunteer tourism, both in a practical and ethical sense, contributes to the difficulties that are encountered by practitioners in guiding its future directions.