A strategic analysis of volunteer tourism organisations

Abstract

A significant number of tourists now wish to combine their concern for the degradation of the environment with their vacation activities. This concern, together with the need for educated people to work on ecological and scientific projects, has led to the emergence of a small but growing number of UK organisations that bring together paying volunteers and research projects to support research into sustainable development. There is little academic literature on the organisations that provide this travel service. The article examines key dynamics of the research volunteer market examined with data from questionnaire responses, interviews and observation. The article uses Porter's five forces model and the Strategic Position and Action Evaluation (SPACE) framework to strategically analyse this sector. The findings suggest that none of the five forces are strong enough to depress profits and therefore, the balance sheets should be healthy; however, this is not always the case. Consequently, the SPACE factors that appear related to the financial viability of the firms are explored. In conclusion, firms have the ability to make a substantial contribution to environmental sustainability and their survival is important; however, the risks of operating in this sector are relatively high.

The Role of the Psychological Contract in Managing Research Volunteer Tourism

“…While currently there is much debate around definitions and boundaries of volunteer tourism, Lyons and Wearing (2008) acknowledge that the earlier definition is limiting. So far, the volunteer tourism literature has concentrated on the volunteer (Brown & Lehto, 2005;Galley & Clifton, 2004;Wearing, 2002Wearing, , 2003 with a smaller number of studies on the host communities (Clifton & Benson, 2006;Gard McGehee & Andereck, 2009) and the organizations associated with volunteer tourism (Benson & Henderson, 2011;Coghlan, 2007;Wearing, McDonald, & Ponting, 2005). This article contributes to the currently underresearched area of RVT.…”

Volunteer tourism, greenwashing and understanding responsible marketing using market signalling theory

“…higher prices are assumed to be more responsible without having to signal it). Quality in the researched volunteer market is not related to the price charged nor financial viability (Benson and Henderson, 2011). And there is little transparency on where the fees go -of 40 companies studied by Tomazos & Cooper (2012), only 18 provided any information-but no hard evidence.…”

“…However, as VT grows in popularity, the true value and costs with regard to the triple bottom line are being called into question (Goodwin, 2011;Wearing, 2001). VT organisations have come under criticism for being overly profit-driven, overpromising benefits, harming destinations and creating customer dissatisfaction (Benson and Henderson, 2011;Crossley, 2012;Simpson, 2004;Tomazos and Cooper, 2012). In this issue of this journal, Taplin, Dredge and Scherrer (2014) outline a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess VT's activities.…”

Motivation-based transformative learning and potential volunteer tourists: facilitating more sustainable outcomes

“…A variety of definitions of volunteer tourism and the volunteer tourist have been developed, but a singular agreed-upon definition has not been determined. In fact, the discussion has expanded to include arguments for differentiating volunteer tourism from voluntourism, international volunteering, and of course study abroad and gap year experiences (Benson & Henderson, 2011;Wearing & Wearing, 2013). For the purposes of this article, we will use the term volunteer tourism and the definition developed by McGehee and Santos (2005) who define it as "utilizing discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist others in need" (p. 760).…”