Trends, fashions and styles come and go, and the travel industry is not immune to such fluctuations. What’s the newest travel trend on the scene? It’s voluntourism, the bringing together of volunteering with tourism to create an aid-giving, hands-on and feel-good holiday combo.
Voluntourism is a tourist or travelling experience that involves an element of volunteering for a charitable cause. Volunteering trips are nothing new, but whereas they once involved extended periods of community involvement or aid work, voluntourism offers shorter bouts of volunteering opportunities intermixed with sightseeing or other travel or tourism experiences.
Travel companies and charity organisations both jumped on the volunteer bandwagon when in the 1990s when they detected a rising desire from tourists to get more out of – and give more – during their holidays, as well as the increasing popularity of the student ‘gap year’.