Volunteer Tourists Perception of a Tourist Destination - Essay Example

?An Investigation into the Priority Factors of a Volunteer Tourist’s Perception of a Tourist Destination Introduction The aim of the research is to investigate the priority factors that facilitate a volunteer tourist’s perception of a tourist destination. In this research, the factors that motivate a tourist to choose a destination for volunteer tourism are both subjective and objective. The factors that the tourists are attached to are considered as subjective, while those, of a destination, that motivate a tourist’s choice have been considered as objective factors. Some of the subjective factors are age, education, economic status, gender, etc and the objective factors are cultural, social, economic, environmental ones. Indeed a volunteer tourist’s perception of a destination is supposed to be influenced by both subjective and objective factors. An in-depth knowledge of the factors that influence the tourist demography’s perception of destinations can help both the entrepreneurs and the academicians in this sector. Rationales for the Research In current tourism discourses, ‘volunteerism’ or ‘volunteer tourism’ is a nascent idea that is related to a wide range of socioeconomic, cultural and environmental concerns. During these days, the growing individual interest in the alluring yields of alternative tourism in response to the lacks of mass tourism has drawn increasing academic as well as commercial attention to the idea of volunteer tourism. On one hand, modern tourism industry increasingly shifts its attention from the conventional mass tourism to the volunteer tourism utilizing the consumers’ interest in unique tourism experiences and on the other hand, the frontiers of tourism industry are constantly confronted with the socioeconomic, cultural and environmental concerns while propounding an all embracive definition, of volunteer tourism, that necessarily will define its relationships with those concerns. Since the term “volunteer tourism” is more of the generalization of a tourism concept that serves as an alternative to the concept of a mass conventional tourism, it appears to be the premise for other particular tourism products such as ecotourism, cultural tourism, adventure tourism, etc that include volunteer components and authenticity of experiences more than conventional mass tourism can offer. Indeed though the tourism industry and its role as direct tourism service providers are quite adaptable with the concept of mass tourism, tourist industry and volunteer tourism are conceptually contrastive with each other, since volunteer tourists want to “benefit from displaced self-understanding and the freedom to go beyond the limits that frontiers [of tourism industries] present” (Wearing, 2001:2). Therefore, whereas mass tourism allows the operators of tourism industries to exert control over the tourists’ activities to adhere to the socio-cultural and environmental protection protocols, to an extent that is greater than the volunteer tourism products allow the operators, since the freedom-zeal expected by the volunteer tourists is in direct contrast with such control. It seems that the tourism industry operators are thrown in endless struggle to make them more flexible and adaptable with these expectations meet the tourists’ expectations freedom to go beyond the limitation of conventional tourism industry, as Igor Ackerberg and Parkpoom Prapasawudi say, “Currently, the sector is moving toward higher commercialization with more profit-oriented companies offering volunteer tourism packages, making the study of volunteer tourists’ perceptions even more important” (2009:1). Therefore, it is imperative for the tourism industry operators to have sound knowledge of the priorities of volunteer tourists that motivate them to choose a destination as a perfect scope of fulfilling their volunteer zeal. In addition, though the current literatures have focused on defining volunteer tourism as well as volunteer tourists’ perceptions, of a tourist destination as fulfilling their needs for authentic experiences, from a theoretical and ideological point of view, these literatures have focused little on the dichotomy between the practical tourists’ perception of a volunteer destination and the theoretical conception of volunteer tourism. Therefore an exploration of the priority factors of a volunteer tourist’s perception of a destination will assist the future researches to overcome the confusion between the ideological aspects and practical aspects of volunteer tourism. Therefore, while including the volunteer components to the existing tourism industry, mass tourism frontiers need to remove their presence as much as they can from the arrangement of volunteer tourism in order to ensure the authenticity of experience while avoiding the superficial representation of the products. The specific objectives of this research are: a. To determines the volunteer tourists’ perception of a destination b. To determine the factors that influence a tourist’s choice of a destination c. To determine the volunteer tourists’ socio-demography d. To assess the underlying values of the volunteer tourists Literature Review The purpose of this study is to investigate in the factors that motivate a volunteer tourist to choose a tourist destination. Therefore the literature review part of this study will focus on a number of key concepts such as volunteering, volunteer tourism, tourist perception, motivating factors of a volunteer tourist’s choice, and a tourist destination. The researcher also will focus on subsidiary ideas such as tourism, relation of volunteer tourism with mainstream tourism and tourism industry, tourism destination and other issues related to the topic of this study. Prior to the reviewing of literatures, the researcher envisaged a model of how the components of volunteer tourism are related to each other and, at the same time, how the motivating factors are related to the components of volunteer tourism, in order to provide the literature review with an inundated framework of discussion. Since by its connotation, volunteer tourism falls in a broad category that includes a number of other more particular sectors of tourism, a volunteer tourism destination is discursive, in nature. Also a tourist’s perception of a destination can been influenced by a number of socio-demographic determinants that are linked as following: Tourism, Tourist Destination and Tourist “Tourism” is fairly a modern concept that connotes a set of ethics; that involves a number of interest groups; and that, after all, requires a careful definition that differs from the concept of “travel” in earlier societies (Rojek & Urry, 1997: 47-9). In modern context, as tourism has emerged as an increasingly influencing factor in the economy of a country, it is more in the focus of the people in concern. Tourism is a modern concept in the sense that its evolution in modern context has been greatly contributed to by various unique features -of modern life, state, and society- that were absent in the earlier concept of travel and tourism. Though the traits of an individual’s life and society are self-evident, the role of a modern state can be problematic to perceive. But the concept of modern state is crucial to the development of tourism because it involves the idea of localities and area with newer rules and regulations (Rojek & Urry, 1997: 45). The development of tourism in term of its broadening connotation can be sketched in the following figure: Figure 1: Development of Tourism Industry The concept of tourism essentially includes the destination which a tourist wants to visit, and the distance between the tourist’s residence and the destination. A tourist’ attraction for the tourism destination as well as the means of movement to it plays a significant role in realizing his tourism desire. In this regard, Leiper notes that the concept of tourism includes three basic aspects: tourists, sectors of tourism, and the geographical elements. The geographical elements of Leiper’s tourism model can be outlined into three distinct parts: “Traveler-generating region”; “Tourist destination region”; and “Transit route region”. Leiper’s tourism model is important for an overall idea of tourism because it encapsulates all the places a tourist comes from and goes, and the means of his travels (Leiper, 1995). Among these three aspects, the tourist destination is the most important one. Indeed most of the tourism industry is established on the ideas and concepts of a tourism destination. Essentially the idea of a tourism destination emphasizes on the activities of the people who are involved in enhancing the potentiality of a place as a tourist destination. In other words, a tourist destination can be considered as a ‘pull’ factor in the tourism market (Kotler, Haider and Rein, 1993: 79). It promises the fulfillment and realization of a tourist’s temporary goal of travel through management strategies and quality of management and service. Volunteer Tourism and its relation with Mainstream Tourism The basic drive that tends to shape the definition of mass tourism is an individual’s desire, to visit a place, that is highly subjective and monopolized by his or her pleasure principles and values. Unlike mass tourism, a volunteer tourist’s pleasure principles include and often are dominated by his or her altruism and authenticity of experience. The definition of a tourist destination crucially involves a man’s cultural and individual pleasure concept of an area. But this definition may also include the necessity of an individual to visit a place or a country, as World Tourism Organization (1993) defines that tourism is “the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outsides their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business, and other purposes”. In current tourism literatures volunteer tourism has two primary facets: the first one is self-willed altruism and the second one is authenticity of tourism experience. Like other tourism products, volunteer tourism also has engendered debates, among the scholars, on its plausibility, role, and its relationship with and place in the modern tourism industry. The most frequently quoted definition of volunteer tourism is that of Wearing (2001). Wearing’s has approached volunteer tourism from a subjective viewpoint. He says that those are volunteer tourists “who, for various reasons, volunteer in an organised way to undertake holidays that might involve aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments or research into aspects of society or environment” (2001:1). His definition is subjective in the sense that he has approached the concept of volunteer tourism from the doer’s perspective. That is, he has tried to define the concept from what the doer or the tourists’ usually wants and do outside the main tenet of mass tourism. Wearing’s behavioural approach to volunteer tourism is essentially the result of the nature of the dual nature of volunteer tourism itself. On one hand, there is a tendency among the scholars as well as the frontiers of tourism to categorize the tourists’ on-tour desires and actions to experience reality more authentically and more intimately as a tourism product naming it “volunteer tourism” and on the other hand, there is the 21st century’s tourists’ attempt to experience the reality more authentically by distancing themselves from the artificial representation of the host organization. Wearing himself seems to be aware of the dual aspect of volunteer tourism, as he notes, “If volunteer tourism is about doing it differently (alternative/sustainable tourism rubic) then how do we do it in both theory and practice?” (Wearing, 2001: 4). Indeed a volunteer tourist’s tendency “to do or experience things differently” often proves to be self-avoiding and at the same time, it defies any predefined approach and setting of tourism. Therefore, theoretically the tourism industry operators have to face the dilemma of involving themselves in setting the stage for volunteer tourism while putting an emphasis on detaching themselves from the spot as much as they can, in order to retain the naturalness of the volunteer tourist’s destination. Again the most problematic part of Wearing’s definition of volunteer tourism is the superimposed altruistic idealism. Unlike Wearing and other scholars’ altruistic dimension of volunteer tourism, there is much possibility that a volunteer tourist will be a passive observer whose only purpose is to experience the real world more authentically. In this case, tourists’ volunteerism generally remains confined to voluntarily organize themselves to undertake holidays. In fact, such voluntary self-organizing limits the role of mass tourism industry operators to simply branding the destination, boosting up the destination image, provide supply to the tourists that they themselves requires. The definition of volunteerism itself theoretically does not permit the mass tourist operators to involve in operating the volunteer tourism since mass tourism is constructed utterly on the basis of the profit orientated consumer capitalism. In the first place, volunteer tourism puts emphasis on individuals’ or groups of individuals’ self-willed altruistic activities while touring a place or a country, as xxx says in this regard, “Volunteer tourism has its roots in ‘volunteerism’, which implies that individuals offer their services to change some aspect of society for the better; in other words, to participate in goodwill activities” (). Theoretically it is assumed that volunteer tourism is endowed with two characteristics: first, the travelers are motivated by the luring authenticity of their travel experience; second, they are self-willed and self-organized to do something unique. But the ideological part of the definition that volunteer tourists are meant to contribute to the positive socioeconomic and environmental changes in the place that they visit is essentially a superficial feature that has been imposed by the frontiers of mass tourism sectors. Since the mass tourism operators often feel it difficult to comply with the volunteer tourists’ expectation of unrestrained and uncontrolled will to do something unique that theoretically lays the path open for the tourists to go against socioeconomic and environmental interests of the host communities, this ideological part of the volunteer tourism provides the mass tourism frontiers with the scope to involve themselves in preparing the volunteer tourism products for the intended consumers. Factors that Influences the Demand of Tourism Demand of tourism is a term that refers to the motivation of a tourist to visit a place. A person’s interest in a place and the destination image of the place are interrelated with each other. But in a broader context, the demand of a tourist correlates with the socio-cultural, political and environmental issues of both the tourist generating region and the traveller generating region (Gilbert, 1991: 80-89). The difference between the socio-cultural, political and environmental features of the two regions (Leiper’s model) generally determines the pull factors of a tourism demand. For example, the cultural, social and environmental novelty of a place functions as a pull factors to attract a tourist. But the push factors of tourism-demand are shaped by any specific cause that motivates a tourist to visit a place irrespective of its cultural and environmental difference. Indeed the push factors remain active in the tourist generating region, whereas the pull factors relates to the traveller generating region (Howard & Sheth, 1973: 94). Another implication of the factors in constructing a destination image from a socio-cultural constructivist perspective is that it highlights the significance of the role of an individual’s culture in the perception of another place as well as its culture that is apparently novel to him (Hsu & Cai, 2009: 45). Therefore, the construction of a destination needs to focus on the demands of the targeted tourists in a particular tourist generating region. The constructivist paradigm is shown in the following diagram: Again a tourist’s demand can be influenced by some intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The intrinsic motivation evolves from a person’s desire to visit a place, whereas the extrinsic factor may influence these intrinsic motivations. The destination image of a place primarily engages with the pull factors of a tourist’s demand (Technische Universitat Dreschen, 2006). But though a destination image can do much with the push, factors, yet it can manipulate some of the push factors to pull the tourists to a place (Middelton, 1994: 109). For example, the religious destination image of Mecca or Jerusalem cannot pull the Hindu pilgrims, but the destination image of Singapore as a country of developed health service can attract people from all country because here the pull factor of better health service manipulates the push factors of a person’s illness. Supply can play a significant role in influencing a tourist’s demand. It can affect both the pull factors in the tourist generating region, traveller generating region, and in the transit route. Supplies are mainly related to the destination image of a place. A tourist may have a particular or a set of primary goals related to the destination image: to visit a place with unique features such as mountains, savannahs, rivers, sea-beach, cultural heritage, historical heritage, etc. But often tourists are influenced by the motivation to visit a place that has the maximum number of these features (Kotler, Haider and Rein, 1993: 89-92). The qualities of hospitality, accommodation, transportation, safety, security, etc influence the demand of a tourism spot in the traveller generating region. In the tourist generating region the presence of information centres in order to provide information, available travel operators and agencies to provide travel services can affect the demand of a destination image (Hsu & Cai, 2009: 49). These supplies are closely related to Mathieson and Wall's (1982) model of selecting a tourist destination: Methodology The purpose of this study, “to investigate into the priority factors of a volunteer tourist perception of a tourist destination” requires an in-depth exploration of the socio-demographic the status and values of the tourists as well as the objective pull factors of the destination. Therefore, in this study, the researcher puts emphasis on the collection of quantitative data that will be collected using a “cross-sectional research design” (Bryman and Bell 2007: 55). In a cross-sectional research, the researcher is required to gather data on a number of variables, “at a single point in time” that are interrelated with each other (Bryman and Bell 2007: 58-59). Essentially, a cross sectional study depends on quantitative data that are collected from the responses of the sample representative demography to questionnaires and that are analysed by the use of a number of statistical methods. According to Collis and Hussey (2009), cross-sectional researches are useful for constrained time and resources. Cross-sectional research designs have own drawbacks also. In such studies, the sample needs to be large enough to ensure the representation of the mass. In cross-sectional studies, it is often difficult to differentiate the external influential factors from the factors being studied. Though it can be shown that correlations between the variables exist, the causality of the correlations cannot be identified. Bryman and Bell (2007: 58) suggest that “such difficulties may be remedied by using an experimental approach but this is generally not possible with business-related studies” (2007: 58). In addition to the use of secondary data obtained from the review of literatures on volunteer tourism, the primary data will be collected by “e-survey” (Veal 2006: 244). The electronic format of the questionnaires will be emailed to the respondents. Collis and Hussey (2009:191-2) define questionnaires as “A list of carefully structured questions, which have been chosen after considerable testing with a view to eliciting reliable responses from a particular group of people. The aim is to find out what they think, do of feel.” (Collis & Hussey 2009:191-2) In the questionnaire, the closed questions will focus on obtaining data on the following subjective socio-demographic variables: a. Age range, b. gender, c. highest educational qualification, d. Profession, e. economic status, f. Earning range, g. marital status, h. number of family members, and i. others. Also liker-type rating questions will be used to determine the tourists’ perception on volunteering as well as the possibility of volunteering in a tourist destination. Also the objective factors, that is, the pull factors of a volunteer tourism destination will be focused in the questionnaire in order to facilitate the determination of the correlations between variables such as age range-cultural tourism, age range-adventure tourism, economic status-cultural tourism, etc. Indeed the basic correlation pattern that will be obtained through the questionnaires is subjective-objective factors correlation. References Gilbert, D.C1991, “An Examination of the Consumer Behavior Process Related to Tourism”. In Progress in Tourism, Recreation and Hospitality Management, edited by C.P. Cooper .London: Belhaven, pp.78-105 Howard J.A and Sheth J.N 1973, ‘The Theory of Buyer Behavior’, in H.H Kassarajian and T.S. Roberton (eds.) Perspectives in Consumer Behavior, Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company. Hsu, C. and Cai, A. L 2009, ‘Brand Knowledge, Trust and Loyalty – A Conceptual Model of Destination Branding’, Hospitality & Tourism Management. University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Kotler, P., Haider, D.H & Rein, I 1993, Marketing Places: Attracting Investment, Industry and Tourism Industry to Cities, States and Nations. Free press, New York. Leiper, N 1995. Tourism Management. TAFE Publications, Collingwood Middelton, V.T.C 1994, Marketing for Travel and Tourism. Butterworth-Heinemann, London .104-112  Mathieson, A. & Wall, G 1982, Tourism Economic, Physical and Social Impacts. Longman, Harlow. 95 Rojek, C and Urry, J. eds 1997. Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory. London: Routledge. Technische Universitat Dreschen 2006, Transrapid - Increasing push and pull of touristic destination. Viewed 10 November 2010, World Tourism Organization 1993. Bryman, A. and Bell, E. 2007. Business research methods. 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP. Collis, J. and Hussey, R. 2009. Business research: a practical guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students. 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Veal, A.J. 2006. Research methods for leisure and tourism: a practical guide. 3rd ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Wearing, S. 2001. Volunteer tourism: experiences that make a difference. Wallingford: CAB International. Read More