Volunteer tourism: An ambiguous marketing phenomenon

One of the more recent forms of tourism to emerge from the continuing fragmentation of tourism into many different forms is what has become known as Volunteer Tourism. Although itself taking on a number of variations, it is essentially the practice of individuals going on a working holiday and volunteering their labour for worthy causes. It is widely accepted that volunteer tourism has mirrored in many ways the development and commercialisation of opportunities for individuals to engage in ecotourism, another form of tourism which also began on a small scale with compassionate and non-economic priorities. This theoretical paper illustrates the ambiguity that characterises the volunteer tourism phenomenon and the challenges that this poses in terms of its marketing.