Transformation of local lives through volunteer tourism: Thai and Peruvian case studies

Volunteer tourism, because of its ambiguities and complexities, represents an interesting and controversial field of investigation. However, to date few empirical studies have been conducted on its transformative potential for the host populations. The literature on volunteer tourism focuses mainly on the volunteers, their motivations, expectations and the transformations they go through during volunteer tourism (Zahra and McGehee, 2013). This chapter aims at bridging the gap in the literature and addressing the potential of volunteer tourism to shape and transform host communities’ perceptions and behaviours. Through a comparative study of two popular volunteer tourism destinations in Peru and Thailand, the transformative process of the hosting population is investigated. It is argued that residents, in experiencing volunteer tourism and encountering volunteers, are active agents of change within the socio-cultural environments they inhabit. Further, in an attempt to understand hosts ‘as persons and how they encounter, receive, respond and react to the effective change in conditions which tourism ultimately entails’ (Robinson, 2012, p. 23), the authors reflect on the long-term social transformations that volunteer tourism brings to host communities. The concept of personal transformation and, in particular, hosts’ learning and personal development is explored.

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