Resources

RESOURCES


RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Kevin Lyons
School/Work Place : University of Newcastle, Australia
Contact : kkevin.lyons@newcastle.edu.au
Year : 2007

The popularity of volunteer tourism as a form of alternative tourism has grown significantly over the past decade (McGehee, and Norman, 2002). Volunteer tourists can now be found throughout the world participating in a wide array of social, educational, political and environmental projects. While these projects continue to use volunteer tourists as a significant source of labour, the NGOs and community organisations that provide and support them have begun exploring other innovative ways to attract and engage volunteer tourists who may wish to provide their voluntary labour in less direct ways. As a result programs are now emerging that move beyond the convention established in volunteer tourism where participants travel to a destination community to volunteer their labour while simultaneously being a ‘tourist’ in the broadest sense of the word. Instead, these new programs fuse adventure, volunteerism and philanthropy incrementally into an innovative tourism experience that challenges traditional debates about the decommodifying processes (Wearing, McDonald, and Ponting, 2005) embedded in volunteer tourism. One example of this new type of volunteer tourism is the development and provision of fundraising adventure tours. Fundraising adventure tourism has been adopted by a number of NGO’s who recruit participants willing to raise a pre-determined sum of money half of which is used to support the NGO’s core business and the remaining funds are used to fund an adventure tour.

Previous arguments have suggested that volunteer tourism does not fit into the commodified regime of mass and packaged tourism as its focus is not on the exchange value in the tourism system (Wearing et al. 2005). This paper explores whether the act of fundraising as an act of volunteering, conducted prior to participating in an adventure tour enabled participants to experience the decommodified frame of gift economy that has been heralded as the hallmark of volunteer tourism (Wearing, 2001) or whether this separation undermines this process. This paper presents a case study of one of these innovative programs developed and operated by Oxfam Community Aid Abroad Australia – Oxfam Challenge program.

This paper draws on the marketing materials of Oxfam and presents findings from an analysis of diaries and web-blogs of 25 individuals who participated in fundraising/cycling adventures with Oxfam Australia– Oxfam Challenge program. The adventure fundraising tour conducted by Oxfam Australia is marketed as an adventure experience with a difference. OXFAM Australia recruits participants willing to raise $5000 which in-part covers the cost of a two week cycling tour through remote villages in China, Vietnam or Cambodia where they visit environmental and humanitarian projects and where the funds they raised are being used. While participants are recruited through Oxfam Australia, the adventure tour component of the program is outsourced to a commercial travel service provider who provides a fully packaged program including airfares, meals, a bicycle, and a guide. This component of the experience is almost identical to any packaged adventurebased tour conducted by a wide range of operators globally.


List of Articles
No. Subject Viewssort Date
414 Think Tank V Discussion on Extended Validity of an Alternative Fram... file 209368 Oct 13, 2013

The risk management of tourism as an industry involves quantification of unprecedented, unlikely but possible negative exogenous event to the region. The objective of this paper is to discuss further on an alternative quantitative method to ...

Author: Tadayuki Hara 

Year: 2005 

413 Think Tank VI Ecotourism and Environmental Education: Opportunities ... file 152157 Oct 13, 2013

Ecotourism, which typically involves nature-based tourism, plays an increasing role in today's environmental management. As environmental conservation has, in many cases, suffered from a limited budget, funding ecotourism is perceived as a w...

Author: Aphirom Promchanya 

Year: 2006 

412 Think Tank VIII Enhancing the Quality of Life through Cultural Events:... file 103864 Oct 13, 2013

The Wadden Sea Festival in Denmark is based on the idea of integrating the coastal environment in the presentation of contemporary art. Specifically, unique tidal differences are utilized to stage a range of performances. The Wadden Sea Fest...

Author: Janne J. Liburd & Anja Hergesell 

Year: 2008 

411 Think Tank VI Corporate Social Responsibility in the Catalan hospita... file 75518 Oct 13, 2013

The practices of CSR have attracted the attention of the investigators, who have prepared a great diversity of theories and the international organisms, which have done recommendations, so that the companies have added them in their strategi...

Author: Ramon Palau 

Year: 2006 

410 Think Tank VIII Moving from Destination Marketing to Destination Manag... file 70601 Oct 13, 2013

This paper provides a case study of how a tourism organisation has interpreted the change from a ‘marketing’ to a ‘management’ approach in destination development. It begins by looking at what the literature has said about destination manag...

Author: David Foster 

Year: 2008 

409 Think Tank XVII Product innovation in route-based tourism: Interactive... file 68166 Aug 17, 2017

Route-based tourism on walking, hiking and cycling routes is experiencing resurgence throughout the world (Collins-Kreiner, 2010) and can be a driver of sustainable development, particularly for remote areas (Briedenhann & Wickens, 2004;...

Author: Anna Scuttari & Isidoro De Bortoli & Harald Pechlaner & Hannes Riegler 

Year: 2017 

408 Think Tank VII Branding Sustainability: Taking 'The Natural Step' in ... file 63447 Oct 13, 2013

Translation of the concept of sustainability into practice is fraught with problems. While policy advances in all sectors of the economy have made steps in the right direction the lack of clarity in defining what is meant by 'sustainability...

Author: Alison Gill & Peter Williams 

Year: 2007 

407 Think Tank XIV Tropical Communities as Resources for Tourism or Touri... file 48598 Jun 26, 2014

The purpose of this paper is to review the barriers to sustainable tourism development faced by rural and developing regions and to explore the notion of tourism and its potential contribution to community well-being, with a focus on Flora’s...

Author: Laurie Murphy, Gianna Moscardo & Anna Blackman 

Year: 2014 

406 Think Tank XVII New Forms of ‘Responsible Tourism’ in Refugee Camps an... file 42631 Aug 17, 2017

Responsible Tourism is about “making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit”. Traveling responsibly is thus about managing travel and destinations in an environmentally and culturally responsible way and de...

Author: Jaume Guia, Sil van de Velde & Lauren Chan 

Year: 2017 

405 OPA award Envisioning Sustainable Tourism Futures: An Evaluation... file 41126 Oct 13, 2013

Methods for researching the future have grown both in variety and rigour, offering new opportunities for understanding sustainable tourism. This paper discusses the value of futures research as a tool for envisioning and planning sustainable...

Author: Pierre Benckendorff 

Year: 2007 

OPA: 2007 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

404 Think Tank XII The Impact of Volcanic Ash Clouds in 2010 and 2011 on ... file 40801 Nov 06, 2013

Few recent events which disrupted global tourism and especially tourism mobility, match the impact of the volcanic ash clouds generated from the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 and the Chilean volcano Puyehue in 20...

Author: David Beirman 

Year: 2012 

403 Think Tank VI Ethical Issues in Collaboration in the Aviation Industry file 39915 Oct 13, 2013

The aviation industry is a critical element of any tourism system, and has several secondary effects – a source of employment and foreign exchange earnings. A ‘national carrier’ is also a symbol of the country, a source of pride amongst the ...

Author: Ravi Ravinder 

Year: 2006 

402 Think Tank XII Integrated Planning of Sustainable Tourism and Mobilit... file 35413 Nov 06, 2013

Emerging tourist market trends are pushing destinations to consider mobility an essential strategic component of sustainable tourism planning. Destination Management needs to use tourism mobility analysis systematically if it wants to seize ...

Author: Anna Scuttari, Maria Della Lucia & Umberto Martini 

Year: 2012 

OPA: 2012 Runner Up 

401 Think Tank XII Barriers and Benefits to Professional Development: Per... file 34099 Nov 06, 2013

This paper builds upon the body of literature on tourism mobilities by considering supply-side perspectives as it relates to workforce planning and preparation. Research into tourism destination competitiveness has suggested that for a touri...

Author: Kevin Lyons, Joanne Hanley & Tamara Young 

Year: 2012 

400 Think Tank IX Cultural values in sustainable tourism: Conflicts betw... file 34070 Oct 13, 2013

This paper evaluates cultural conflicts between indigenous groups, recreation users and management agencies over the appropriate amenity use of protected areas in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. It assesses both social values conflicts ...

Author: Heather Zeppel 

Year: 2009 

OPA: 2009 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

399 Think Tank XIV Implementation and Governance of Hotel Chain's CSR pol... file 33800 Jun 26, 2014

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained increasing importance in the tourism industry over the past two decades, making it a central aspect of many business strategies. Many international hotel corporations have integrated CSR polic...

Author: Dagmar Lund-Durlacher & Carolin Brewi 

Year: 2014 

398 Think Tank XIX Eco-Fatigue and its Potential Impact on Sustainable To... file 28734 Oct 23, 2019

Key words: eco-fatigue, demand for sustainable tourism, tourist experience, sustainability marketing Page: 140-164 Eco-Fatigue and its Potential Impact on Sustainable Tourist Experiences.pdf Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* ...

Author: Gianna Moscardo and John Pearce 

Year: 2019 

397 Think Tank XIII Sri Lanka, Tourism for a Brighter Future? A Review of ... file 27846 Nov 06, 2013

Tourism is considered to have the potential to generate foreign exchange revenue, create jobs for all levels, support handicraft and export industries, promote art and subsidise the development of transportation infrastructure; as it’s a vec...

Author: Zilmiyah Kamble & Frederic Bouchon 

Year: 2013 

396 Think Tank XIV Tourism Development as Greek Tragedy: Implications for... file 25139 Jun 26, 2014

Although tourism has been used as a development strategy in many parts of the world for several decades, there is little evidence that it is an effective tool for improving the wellbeing of destination communities. It is not uncommon to find...

Author: Gianna Moscardo, Anna Blackman & Laurie Murphy 

Year: 2014 

395 Think Tank VII Tourist Perceptions of Environmentally Friendly Innova... file 24557 Oct 13, 2013

As the environmental movement got underway and environmental awareness came into focus in the late 20th century, the tourism industry began incorporating 'environmentally friendly' efforts into their business practices. Requests for towel r...

Author: Kathleen L. Andereck 

Year: 2007 

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