The volunteer tourist as ‘hero’

Tomazos, Konstantinos; Butler, Richard

doi:10.1080/13683500903038863

Cited by 75 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In contrast with mass tourism though, where individuals want to "come back refreshed as better versions of their same old selves" (Graburn 2004: 33), volunteer tourists are searching for an extraordinary experience emphasizing on aspects of personal growth and self-actualization. They are closer to MacCannell and MacCannell's (1993) Volunteer tourists then emerge victorious from the unknown and exotic and return home heroes (Tomazos and Butler 2010). Critics will argue, though, that they are heroes only to their own self-perceived identity and almost definitely not to the local community which realizes insignificant and sometimes even negative benefits from volunteer tourism (Guttentag 2009).…”

Section: Rites Of Passagementioning

confidence: 99%

Volunteer Tourism as a Transformative Experience: A Mixed Methods Empirical Study

Μαγρίζος

Kostopoulos

Powers

2020

Journal of Travel Research

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In an effort to combine tourism with pro-social giving and personal development, more and more people choose to go abroad on volunteer tourism trips. We explore the potential transformational influence such trips have on travelers, aiming to map the transformation process stages and examine their boundary conditions. In doing so, we follow a mixed methods approach using a qualitative study comprising ethnographically informed in-depth interviews and a quantitative one, by means of a structured questionnaire. Findings indicate that the transformation process volunteer tourists undergo involves three stages related to liminality. We conceptualize the degree of liminality as immersiveness and show how the transformation process is significantly influenced by the degree of authenticity and the immersiveness of volunteer tourists’ experiences, as well as their own perceptions on how societally meaningful their actions were during their trips. Based on our conclusions, we present important implications for academics, managers, and tour operators.

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Section: Rites Of Passagementioning

confidence: 99%

Volunteer Tourism as a Transformative Experience: A Mixed Methods Empirical Study

Μαγρίζος

Kostopoulos

Powers

2020

Journal of Travel Research

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“…Orphanage tourism, for example, is often solely considered a volunteer tourism trend (Tomazos and Butler 2010;voelkl 2012;Reas 2013aReas , 2013bReas , 2015Proyrungroj 2014;verstraete 2014). By considering such trends within distinct academic fields, and as distinct groups such as gap years, a comprehensive picture of tourism development is impossible, and criticisms will remain all-encompassing.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tourism and Leisure Mobilities

Rickly¹,

Hannam²,

Mostafanezhad³

2016

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This book reframes tourism, as well as leisure, within mobilities studies to challenge the limitations that dichotomous understandings of home/away, work/ leisure, and host/guest bring. A mobilities approach to tourism and leisure encourages us to think beyond the mobilities of tourists to ways in which tourism and leisure experiences bring other mobilities into sync, or disorder, and as a result re-conceptualises social theory. The anthology stretches across academic disciplines and fields of study to illustrate the advantages of multidisciplinary conversation, and in so doing it challenges how we approach studies of movement-based phenomena and the concept of scale. Part I examines the ways in which mobility informs and is informed by leisure, from everyday practices to leisure-inspired mobile lifestyles. Part II investigates individuals and communities that become entrepreneurial in the face of changing tourism contexts and reflects on the performance of work through multiple mobilities. Part III turns to issues of development, with attention to the cultural politics that frame development encounters in the context of tourism. The varied ways that people move into and out of development projects is mediated by geopolitical discourses that can both challenge and perpetuate geographic imaginations of tourism destinations.The aim of this series is to explore and communicate the intersections and relationships between leisure, tourism and human mobility within the social sciences.It will incorporate both traditional and new perspectives on leisure and tourism from contemporary geography, e.g. notions of identity, representation and culture, while also providing for perspectives from cognate areas such as anthropology, cultural studies, gastronomy and food studies, marketing, policy studies and political economy, regional and urban planning, and sociology, within the development of an integrated field of leisure and tourism studies.Also, increasingly, tourism and leisure are regarded as steps in a continuum of human mobility. Inclusion of mobility in the series offers the prospect to examine the relationship between tourism and migration, the sojourner, educational travel, and second home and retirement travel phenomena.For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/SE0522 The series comprises two strands:

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“…Tracing the backpackers' heroic journey It is not difficult to fit Campbell's pattern or 'monomyth' (Campbell, 1968) within the scope of backpacking as the Hero's Journey has been repeatedly been used in the study of tourist phenomena (Noy, 2004;Tomazos & Butler, 2010). The hero tourists seek to journey further than the norm to discover their own narratives and their true self.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backpacking Through an Ontology of Becoming: A Never‐ending Cycle of Journeys

Tomazos

2015

Journal of Tourism Research

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By adopting an ontological stance of becoming, this study traces qualitatively the journeys of contemporary backpacker tourists using the theoretical construct of the ‘Hero's Journey’ as a conceptual vehicle. This process allows for the development of a cyclical model of experience that illustrates the backpacker's experience in three stages of departure, initiation and return. This approach reveals the role that former backpackers play through the sharing of knowledge and the invaluable support they offer to novice backpackers through a network of support that is available to contemporary backpackers who choose to follow established backpacking trails. This never ending cycle of journeys becomes instrumental into the shaping of what this paper see as the common, collective consciousness of the backpacking experience and the evolution of the backpacking experience market. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The volunteer tourist as ‘hero’

Cited by 75 publications

References 12 publications

Volunteer Tourism as a Transformative Experience: A Mixed Methods Empirical Study

Volunteer Tourism as a Transformative Experience: A Mixed Methods Empirical Study

Tourism and Leisure Mobilities

Backpacking Through an Ontology of Becoming: A Never‐ending Cycle of Journeys

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