Travel & Tourism - Reading
Celia Carrera Olivares
VOLUNTOURISM – A NEW TREND
IN TRAVEL
Volunteering to help people in need combined with travelling to faraway places is a new trend in the travel industry.It is called voluntourism. People travel to other countries, learn larguages, and other cultures and gain new experiences. On the other side, they volunteer to help others who are not as well off as they are.
Recent statistics show that in the past few years voluntourism has been one of the
fastest-growing areas of tourism. More than 1.6 million people around the world are volunteers in
other countries. They work in orphanages,
help build schools, assist in
hospitals and do farming work in developing countries. Some of them establish lasting bonds with people far
away.
While voluntourism has been
around for over a century, modern
volunteering started with the Peace Corps, a program that the US government started in
the 1960s.
There are many reasons why people want to engage in voluntourism. Students see it as a gap year after school,
others simply want to take time out from a job and do something else. Then
there are those who are bored and merely seek adventure. However, many
voluntourists do not see volunteering as what it is. They think it is a
cheap way of traveling and don't really want to get involved in hard work.
Not everyone sees voluntourism in a positive way. Critics say
that if people really want to help those in need there are many opportunities in their
own community to
do this. On the other side, volunteers are often not skilled enough for
the tasks that
they do. Travel experts point out that
in some cases voluntourists are exploited by the organization that sets up
the trips.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Rosmanitz, Klaus. “Voluntourism- A new trend in
Travel.” N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2017.
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