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RESOURCES


RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Nancy McGehee
School/Work Place : Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA
Contact : nmcgehee@vt.edu
Year : 2007

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a rapidly expanding urban setting in Baja California, Mexico. Both are suffering from a lack of affordable health care, with minimal access to quality public education and healthy food and drinking water. Both are experiencing the benefits and the challenges of receiving volunteer tourists. This is an attempt to illuminate the perspective of the residents of these communities and to recognize the complexity of the relationships between and among volunteer tourists and the voluntoured.

A steadily growing body of work exists in the area of volunteer tourism. McGehee and Santos (2005:760) define volunteer tourism as “utilizing discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist others in need.”

Most of the research in this area has concentrated on the volunteer tourist (Brown and Morrison, 2003; McGehee and Santos, 2005; McGehee, 2002; McGehee and Norman, 2002; Mustonen, 2005; Stoddart and Rogerson, 2004; Wearing, 2000; 2001; 2002; 2004; Wearing and Deane, 2003), as opposed to people in the local community who host the volunteers. For the most part, the research to date has been primarily descriptive and uncritically posits volunteer tourism as a positive and often environmentally sustainable alternative to mass tourism. However, very little, if any, research exists that questions or explores the socio-cultural sustainability of volunteer tourism. The purpose of this study is to illuminate some of the complex issues that exist in the relationship between volunteer tourists and the voluntoured.


List of Articles
No. Subject Viewssort Date
25 Think Tank VII Branding Sustainability: Taking 'The Natural Step' in ... file 63442 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 

24 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 

23 Think Tank VII Tourism Resource Teams: Innovation with and for touris... file 12110 Oct 13, 2013

Communities have a variety of interest levels in tourism overall, including sustainable tourism (WTO, 2002). While we have witnessed increased awareness and discussions about sustainability and sustainable tourism, there is often a lack of s...

Author: Cynthia Messer, Ingrid Schneider & Okechukwu Ukaga 

Year: 2007 

22 Think Tank VII There's No Such Thing as Sustainable Tourism: Innovati... file 11780 Oct 13, 2013

Innovation can come in many forms but all of these share three common elements - creativity, a problem solving approach and a new way of thinking. This paper proposes that current approaches to tourism and sustainable regional development h...

Author: Gianna Moscardo 

Year: 2007 

21 Think Tank VII The Community of Communicators and the Communication o... file 10461 Oct 13, 2013

In spite of the trend towards business as a key element in society and tourism, governments still play an important role in the sustainable development debate. Like any social institution, governments and related organizations do not always ...

Author: Keith Henning 

Year: 2007 

20 Think Tank VII Learning as Prerequisite for Innovations in Tourism - ... file 10304 Oct 13, 2013

This article reports on an ongoing project that focuses on learning and innovation as prerequisites for sustainable tourism in a transnational environment defined by the European North Sea Region. According to Buhalis (2000: 113) providing i...

Author: Janne Liburd & Anja Hergesell 

Year: 2007 

19 Think Tank VII Barriers to Innovation in Hospitality Provision: Towar... file 9118 Oct 13, 2013

Recent challenges within the hospitality industry highlight a critical need for research and innovation to inform management practice. Surprisingly, however, a comprehensive review of literature has found that innovation research within the...

Author: Conrad Lashley & Barry O'Mahony 

Year: 2007 

18 Think Tank VII Environmentally Sustainable Practices of Victorian Tou... file 7965 Oct 13, 2013

Environmental sustainability has been a growing concern in our society for the past twenty years, and is a primary issue of many leaders of the tourism industry. In spite of the many efforts to encourage and/or enforce environmentally sound ...

Author: Sue Beeton, Sue Bergin-Seers & Christine Lee 

Year: 2007 

17 Think Tank VII The New World of Travel 2.0: Application of Social Sof... file 7749 Oct 13, 2013

"Web 2.0" is a term used to refer to the emerging new wave of innovation on the Internet. Some see it as a second high-tech wave, marking the recovery from the technology and Internet "bust" at the end of the 1990s (O'Reilly 2005). Character...

Author: Alan A. Lew 

Year: 2007 

16 Think Tank VII Destination and Enterprise Management for a Tourism Fu... file 7743 Oct 13, 2013

A key element of a successful tourism industry is the ability to recognize and deal with change across a wide range of key factors and the way they interact. Key drivers of global change can be classified as Economic, Social, Political, Tec...

Author: Larry Dwyer, Deborah Edwards, Nina Mistilis, & Carolina Roman 

Year: 2007 

15 Think Tank VII The Practical Application of Sustainable Tourism Devel... file 6810 Oct 13, 2013

The internationally acclaimed Blackstone Valley Tourism Council continues to create a sustainable visitor destination using whole place-making techniques. Under its auspices, the Sustainable Tourism Planning and Development Laboratory share...

Author: Robert Billington, Natalie Carter & Lilly Kayamba 

Year: 2007 

» Think Tank VII Volunteer Tourism: Sustainable Innovation in Tourism, ... file 6074 Oct 13, 2013

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a ra...

Author: Nancy McGehee 

Year: 2007 

13 Think Tank VII Practical Interpretations of a Dynamic Model of Sustai... file 5647 Oct 13, 2013

"Operational definitions of tourism sustainability require details regarding what is to be sustained, for whom it is to be sustained, and the level at which it is to be sustained." This is the introductory sentence to "A Dynamic Model of Sus...

Author: Timothy Tyrrell & Robert Johnston 

Year: 2007 

12 Think Tank VII Innovations in Volunteer Tourism: A Case Study of Fund... file 5309 Oct 13, 2013

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, ...

Author: Kevin Lyons 

Year: 2007 

11 Think Tank VII Web 2.0, Tourist Activated Networks and Sustainability... file 4816 Oct 13, 2013

With the emergence of Web 2.0, the Internet has begun to realize its potential in supporting the tourism experience. This presentation will first identify a number of applications within Web 2.0 that are visitor oriented - from Expedia and T...

Author: Daniel Fesenmaier 

Year: 2007 

10 Think Tank VII Rural Adventure Tourism and Social Entrepreneurship file 4793 Oct 13, 2013

The intent of this research is to provide a comparative analysis of several innovative social entrepreneurial businesses operating within the realm of rural adventure tourism. This qualitative, case-based research explores six companies, wh...

Author: Christina Heyniger & Kristin Lamoureaux 

Year: 2007 

9 Think Tank VII Getting Fit to Innovate: TUI's InnOlympics file 4622 Oct 13, 2013

Tether (2003) describes innovation within service industries as having a Cinderella status - marginal and neglected. The traditional approach to thinking about innovation has been to concentrate on manufacturing and within that, the role of...

Author: Graham Miller & Caroline Scarles 

Year: 2007 

8 Think Tank VII Envisioning Sustainable Tourism Futures: An Evaluation... file 4546 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 

7 Think Tank VII Thematic Analysis of Sustainable Tourism and the Tripl... file 3890 Oct 13, 2013

The relationship between the themes in sustainable tourism publications and the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) was explored in this article. A categorised list of 3719 sustainable tourism articles was thematically analysed to determine the conten...

Author: Michael Hughes & Jack Carlsen 

Year: 2007 

6 Think Tank VII Innovative Technologies in Travel and Tourism - Toward... file 3205 Oct 13, 2013

While it seems to be gradually dawning on humankind that the quality of our lives and (in extremis)survival of our and subsequent generations will depend to a significant extent on our ability and willingness to make urgent and significant ...

Author: Ivo Martinac 

Year: 2007 

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