Tourism has been one of the industries most highly affected by COVID-19. The COVID-19 global pandemic is an 'unprecedented crisis' and has exposed the pitfalls of a hyper consumption model of economic growth and development. The scale of immediate economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the myth of 'catch up development' and 'perpetual growth'. The Crisis has brought unintended degrowth, presenting opportunities for an economic and social 'reset'. In terms of long-term thinking post COVID-19, it is time to change the parameters of how we imagine a trajectory going forward, to prefigure possibilities for contesting capitalist imperatives that 'there is no alternative'. In relation to tourism, the pandemic provides an opportunity for reimaging tourism otherwise, away from exploitative models that disregard people, places, and the natural environment, and towards a tourism that has positive impacts. Non-western alternatives to neo-colonial and neoliberal capitalism, such the South American concept of 'Buen Vivir', can help us to shift priorities away from economic growth, towards greater social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connections. Taking a Buen Vivir approach to tourism will continue the degrowth momentum, for transformative change in society within the earth's physical limits. Yet Buen Vivir also redefines the parameters of how we understand 'limits'. In limiting unsustainable practices in development and tourism, a focus on Buen Vivir actually creates growth in other areas, such as social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connection. Buen Vivir can reorient the tourism industry towards localised tourism, and slow tourism because the principles of Buen Vivir require these alternatives to be small-scale, local and benefiting host communities as well as tourists to increase the wellbeing for all.

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Volunteer tourism has been criticised for promoting neo-colonial discourses of development aid. To date, there is a dearth of research into organisations that do not overtly position themselves within a development aid context. This article draws on ethnographic research within a smallscale organisation in Ecuador, Fundacion Arte del Mundo, which promotes the creative arts, intercultural learning and mutuality as core to its volunteerism. This article highlights the benefits and potentialities of emphasising such intercultural learning exchanges and suggests that the predominance of development aid discourses, both in the practice and critiques of volunteer tourism can obscure a more serious engagement with such examples of learning and mutuality as constitutive of a less paternalistic volunteer tourism. The article argues that the experiences evident in the volunteerism of Fundacion Arte del Mundo at times actively subvert and decentre neo-colonial binaries and power differentials that often underpin exchanges between volunteers and the local community. By drawing attention to experiences of intercultural learning and mutuality, the article serves to shift the framing of discussion and practices of volunteer tourism away from those which consistently draw on neo-colonial binaries as the reference point of analysis and in doing so reify their interpretive power.

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