South Africa, Township near Pretoria: Tourists visit a Township

Volunteer tourism

The above sections on pro-poor tourism, fair trade and NGOs reflect to a large degree on what policies initiated by governments, NGOs or the industry can do to assist local communities. Volunteer tourism takes the focus to the tourists them-selves. Wearing (2001: 1) states that volunteer tourism ‘applies to those tourists who 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’. While the tourist provides some assistance in some form, the benefits, according to Wearing (2001), not only go to the host community but the experience also benefits the tourists. The experience can cause value change and altered consciousness in tourists, subsequently changing their lifestyle. Scheyvens (2002) describes volunteer tourism as an element of ‘justice tourism’ with individuals paying to travel to developing countries to assist with development or conservation projects. Wearing (2001) also states that volunteer tourism may be viewed as a development strategy leading to sustainable development. Conservation work is carried out in a variety of destinations such as Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and can occur in places such as rain forests, cloud forests, conservation areas and biological reserves (Wearing 2001). Campbell and Smith (2006) examined the values of volunteer tourists working for sea turtle conservation in Tortuguero, Costa Rica. The volunteering is organized by the Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC), a NGO headquartered in the United States but with a national office in Costa Rica, and a year-round field station in Tortuguero. The second main type of volunteer tourism is linked to development work by tourists. These types of projects can involve offering medical assistance, projects linked to heritage and cultural restoration, and other types of social and economic development initiatives (Wearing 2001). In the case of South Africa, Stoddart and Rogerson (2004) examined volunteer tourists volunteering with Habitat for Humanity Inter-national’s Global Village Work Camp Programme. Volunteers work with local community members, thereby raising their own awareness of poverty and building decent, affordable housing.

One segment that receives a fair bit of attention is students volunteering during their ‘gap year’, which tends to be between ﬁnishing school and starting university.

This is very popular, especially in Britain, although Simpson (2004) indicates that the demographics of the ‘gap year’ are expanding to people taking ‘career breaks’.

There are numerous Internet sites advertising various ‘gap year’ experiences. The phenomenon of youth travelling for substantial periods of time is not limited only to Britain; young people from countries such as Australia and New Zealand are also known for longer trips abroad. While volunteer tourism has the potential to assist communities, concerns have also been raised. Simpson (2004: 690) states:

currently, the gap year industry promotes an image of a ‘third world other’ that is dominated by simplistic binaries of ‘us and them’, and is expressed through essentialist clichés, where the public face of development is one dominated by the value of western

‘good intentions’.

Other concerns raised include whether the volunteers are actually making a di ffer-ence or causing more difficulties than providing benefits, and whether the gap year is a new form of colonialism (Brown 2006).

Gender and community development

A theme of this chapter is that communities are made up of individuals and groups; they do not all have the same values and goals, and they do not face the same challenges or have the same opportunities. Within the United Nations Millennium Development goals both women and children are speciﬁcally men-tioned. In India, for example, a law recently came into eﬀect banning children under 14 years of age from working as servants in homes, or in restaurants, tea-shops, hotels and spas (Associated Press 2006). There is a discourse that high-lights the links between the social and economic position of women in developing countries and environmental degradation (Baker 2006: 167):

The position of women makes them more vulnerable to the negative eﬀects of environmental degradation than their male counterparts. They are more marginalised, usually work harder, especially if engaged in agricultural labour, have a less adequate diet and are often denied a voice in the political, economic and social spheres.

In the tourism impact literature, the relationship between women and tourism has been discussed from a number of diﬀerent perspectives, including women having more opportunities as a result of tourism as well as being exploited by tourism such as working in the sex industry (Hashimoto 2002). Studies have also identiﬁed that it is often the managerial positions that are taken by men, while women are more likely to occupy lower payed, part-time and seasonal positions (Wall and Mathieson 2006).

A change has occurred within the women and environment debate as the dis-cussion has shifted to sustainable development (Baker 2006). The early disdis-cussions focused on women as passive victims of environmental degradation stemming from global processes and, more recently, there has been increased emphasis on women’s positive roles as eﬃcient environmental resource managers in developing countries.

Baker (2006: 168) highlights some ways in which women can be promoters of sustainable development:

• With their domestic, agricultural and cultural roles, women are key agents in promoting sustainable development.

• Women hold knowledge of their local environment and they are the key to developing appropriate biodiversity strategies.

• Promoting sustainable livelihoods at community level can be accelerated by giving women the right to inherit land as well as to have access to credit and resources.

• A strong connection exists between promoting human rights, especially for women, and promoting sustainable development, as it is based on equity and partnership.

• The promotion of democratic environmental governance has a gender dimension, as participation based on gender equality of access is more democratic, legitimate and eﬀective.

The above list illustrates some of the key areas where women can be promoters of sustainable development in their communities. These roles are of major impor-tance in the context of tourism. In community-based tourism, for example, women have the potential to help promote sustainable development in their interactions with the tourists and the natural environment. The tourism industry has created new opportunities for women, particularly in developing countries and rural areas (Wall and Mathieson 2006), with a variety of positions in both the formal (e.g.

hotels and running guest-houses) and the informal sector (e.g. guides and street/

beach vendors) (see Plate 5.6). It has also generated greater independence and more income for some (Hashimoto 2002; Momsen 2004).

Conclusion

Preston (1996) suggests that there are three main paradigms in terms of charac-terizing and securing development. The ﬁrst paradigm focuses on state inter-vention, the second on the role of the free market, and the third relates to the power of the political community. This chapter largely focuses on the third aspect: the power of the political community and the development of tourism at the local level. As Preston (1996) suggests, this approach is oriented towards securing formal Plate 5.6 Indonesia, Lombok: Young women present traditional Sasak weaving.

and substantive democracy and has an institutional vehicle through NGOs, charities and dissenting social movements. In the context of tourism it is important to recognize to what degree local communities interact with the state and the market forces. A key issue with respect to the relationship between tourism and communities is the power relationships that exist within the community and between communities and the tourism sector. Does the local community have a chance to participate in a meaningful way? As Milne and Ewing (2004: 215) state, the critical issue becomes ‘how do we ensure not only that local involvement and participation occurred, but that it can be sustained in such a way that it leads to effective development outcomes?’ The development benefits of tourism need to extend to as many as possible in the community. Critics focusing on the power of the political community have highlighted the alleged impractical idealism of the approach along with the potential to generate conflict between powerful groups in the peripheries and metropolitan centres which can make the situation of the poor worse (Preston 1996). Others have suggested that problems of consensus building, barriers to participation, lack of accountability, weak institutions, and a lack of integration with international funding organizations are barriers to indigenous or community development (Wiarda 1988; Brinkerhoff and Ingle 1989).

Communities are complex, and are increasingly recognized as important resources for tourism. With the shift to sustainability, participation of local communities and capacity building has become central to many tourism plans.

Communities are not only impacted by tourism but they also respond and take advantage of the opportunities from tourism (Wall and Mathieson 2006). This chapter has referred to several types of tourism as well as several strategies that can be adopted to promote additional beneﬁts to disadvantaged communities.

Caution, however, needs to be used when comparing diﬀerent types of tourism. In the tourism literature comparisons have been made between large-scale mass tourism and small-scale community-based tourism. As Butler (1993: 34) suggested,

‘making simplistic and idealised comparisons of hard and soft, or mass and green tourism, such that one is obviously undesirable and the other close to perfection, is not only inadequate, it is grossly misleading’. He goes on to state that mass tourism does not have to be uncontrolled, unplanned, short term or unstable; green tourism – or in the case of this chapter we could add community-based tourism – is not always inevitably considerate, optimizing, controlled, planned and under local con-trol. Community-based tourism may well generate conﬂict, inequities and resource exploitation. The economic and political realities of the marketplace with respect to tourism and the communities where tourism occurs need to be considered.

A highly fragmented and extremely competitive tourism industry in the public and private sectors often mitigates against self or internal control (Butler 1993).

Having examined the nature of ‘host’ communities and various strategies of community-based tourism, the next chapter will focus on the ‘guest’ by exploring the consumption of tourism.

Discussion questions

1 Distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of both the informal and formal tourism employment sectors.

2 Can community-based tourism development help promote community and individual empowerment?

3 Does hosting international tourists reinforce notions of dependency for communities?

4 Does community-based tourism represent a form of sustainable tourism?

5 What role should NGOs take in community-based tourism?

Websites

This website illustrates how the United Nations works with civil society organizations: www.un.org/issues/civilsociety/.

This United Nations web page has links to information and resources on gender equality and empowerment of women: www.un.org/womenwatch/.

The consumption 6

of tourism

Learning objectives

When you have ﬁnished reading this chapter, you should be able to:

Appreciate the factors that influence tourist consumer behaviour;

Understand the changing nature of tourism demand;

Identify the extent of emerging, new, environmentally aware, tourism markets;

Identify ways in which the tourism industry can influence tourist behaviour;

Appreciate the importance of domestic tourism in development.

Tourism is, essentially, a social activity. Certainly it is big business and one of the world’s largest economic sectors, providing a signiﬁcant source of income and foreign exchange earnings for many countries; certainly it is a vast and diverse industry, providing employment for up to 10 per cent of the global workforce; and certainly, as this book explores, it is a potentially eﬀective agent of development.

However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that, ﬁrst and foremost, tourism is about people – it is about millions of individuals travelling within their own countries or overseas, visiting places and attractions, staying in destinations and engaging in various activities during their stay.

More speciﬁcally, tourism is about people – tourists – who interact with and impact upon other people and other places. In other words, a fundamental charac-teristic of tourism is that the product is ‘consumed’ on site; whether in their home country or overseas, tourists must travel to the destination to enjoy or participate in tourism. In fact, as with all services, the tourism product – normally thought of as tourist experiences – cannot actually be produced without the input of tourists into the production process. Although hotels, restaurants, shops, transport operators, attractions and other businesses within the tourism sector oﬀer potential services, these services (or experiences) are not provided until tourists actually purchase and consume them (Smith 1994). Thus, tourism development inevitably results in the

presence of tourists in the destination; equally, the presence of tourists inevitably brings about consequences (both positive and negative) for the destination’s environment, its economy and local communities.

The consequences or impacts of tourism development are explored in more detail in the next chapter. However, it has long been recognized that the nature of these impacts cannot be divorced from the nature of the consumption of tourism itself. Although the emergence of mass international tourism in the 1960s was greeted with some degree of optimism, the potential economic beneﬁts of tourism being seen as a panacea to the developmental challenges facing destinations and their communities, it was not long before concern was being expressed about the adverse eﬀects of mass tourism consumption on local environments and cultures.

One commentator at that time, for example, observed that, as mass tourism develops:

local life and industry shrivel, hospitality vanishes, and indigenous populations drift into a quasi-parasitic way of life catering with contemptuous servility to the unsophisticated multitude.

(Mishan 1969: 142)

During the 1970s, books such as Tourism: Blessing or Blight? (Young 1973) and The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery (Turner and Ash 1975) adopted a more balanced perspective; yet the overall tone was that mass tourism may have consequences for the destination that potentially outweigh the developmental beneﬁts of tourism. Indeed, by the 1990s, most if not all of the problems associated with tourism development were being blamed on mass tourism and tourists:

the crisis of the tourism industry is a crisis of mass tourism; for it is mass tourism that has brought social, cultural, economic and environmental havoc in its wake, and it is mass tourism practices that must be radically changed to bring in the new.

(Poon 1993: 3)

The ‘new’ proposed by Poon refers to alternative (to mass), sustainable forms of tourism development, the achievement of which, as noted in Chapter 2, is dependent on the adoption of a new ‘social paradigm’ with respect to the con-sumption of tourism. In other words, fundamental to the successful development of more appropriate, sustainable forms of tourism is the need for tourists to act more sustainably, to become ‘good’ or ‘responsible’ tourists. Poon also suggested that, by the early 1990s, there was, in fact, evidence of the emergence of ‘new’

tourists – that is, tourists who are more environmentally aware, more quality conscious, more adventurous, and more ready to reject the passive, structured, mass-produced package holiday in favour of more individualistic, authentic experiences. Since then, not only has it become widely assumed that tourists are becoming ‘greener’ or increasingly disposed towards consuming tourism in more responsible or environmentally appropriate ways, but also that assumption has frequently been used as the justiﬁcation for developing or promoting sustainable forms of tourism.

Importantly, however, there is little evidence to support this claim that tourists are in fact becoming greener. For example, it is often suggested that the growth in demand for ecotourism is a sign that tourists are increasingly seeking environ-mentally appropriate tourism experiences. It is certainly true that ecotourism is becoming increasingly popular; indeed, recent research suggests that the number of tourists taking ecotourist holidays is growing three times faster than those choosing ‘mainstream’ holidays and that, by 2024, ecotourism will represent 5 per cent of the global holiday market (Starmer-Smith 2004). However, signiﬁcant doubt exists about the extent to which ‘ecotourists’ are motivated by genuine environmental concerns (Sharpley 2006b). Similarly, while surveys suggest that many tourists would be willing to pay more for environmentally friendly holidays (see e.g. Tearfund 2000), there is limited evidence that this is manifested in practice.

The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to explore the nature of the consump-tion of tourism and the consequential implicaconsump-tions for sustainable tourism develop-ment. The ﬁrst questions to address brieﬂy are: What is the tourism demand/

consumption process? What are the factors that inﬂuence that process? How has the consumption of tourism changed over time?

The tourism demand process

Tourism demand or consumption is a complex process, described by one commen-tator as ‘discretionary, episodic, future oriented, dynamic, socially influenced and evolving’ (Pearce 1992: 114). In other words, the demand for tourism involves making choices about how to spend specific periods of leisure time, choices which may be influenced by a variety of factors and which may change over time. More-over, it is not only about how and why people decide to participate in tourism, but also about how they behave as tourists, why they choose particular types of tourism, what tourism means to them, and why their ‘tastes’ in tourism may change.

Despite this complexity, however, tourism demand is seen typically, though somewhat simplistically, as a sequential set of stages which may be summarized as follows:

Stage 1 Problem identiﬁcation/felt need.

Stage 2 Information search and evaluation.

Stage 3 Purchase (travel) decision.

Stage 4 Travel experience.

Stage 5 Experience evaluation.

Each stage in the demand process may be inﬂuenced by personal and external variables, such as time and money constraints, social stimuli, media inﬂuences, images/perceptions of the destination, or marketing, while each consumption experience feeds into subsequent decision-making processes (Figure 6.1).

At the same time, of course, tourism demand is not a ‘one-oﬀ’ event. People consume tourism over a lifetime, during which tourists may climb a ‘travel career ladder’ (Pearce 1992) as they become more experienced tourists. As a result,

tourists’ travel needs and expectations may change and evolve, but these may also be framed and inﬂuenced by evolving social relationships, lifestyle factors and constraints, and emerging values and attitudes. This latter point is of particular relevance to the theme of this chapter and will be returned to shortly, but funda-mental to understanding the consumption of tourism is an appreciation of the factors that may inﬂuence the demand process. These may be categorized under four headings (see Cooper et al. 2005: 53):

1 Energizers of demand. These are the forces and inﬂuences (or personal ‘push’

factors) that collectively create the motivation to travel or go on holiday, or initiate the demand process.

2 Eﬀectors of demand. The information search/evaluation process and subsequent purchase decision is inﬂuenced by the tourist’s knowledge and perceptions of particular places, destinations or experiences. These are sometimes referred to as destinational ‘pull’ factors which lead the tourist to making particular travel choices.

3 Filterers/determinants of demand. A variety of economic, social and demographic factors determine particular choices or ‘ﬁlter out’

inappropriate products. These include: mobility; employment and income;

paid holiday entitlement; education levels; and age, gender, race and stage in family life cycle. In addition, choice may be determined by intangible, psychographic variables, such as attitudes, values and lifestyle.

4 Roles. Holiday/travel choices are also inﬂuenced by roles within the purchasing ‘unit’ (for example, the diﬀerent roles adopted by family members in choosing a holiday) and as tourists.

Evidently, then, an almost infinite combination of variables may influence how, when and where tourism is consumed by individual tourists, to the extent that predicting tourist behaviour may be seen as a difficult if not impossible task. In fact, according to Krippendorf (1987), many tourists themselves are unable to Figure 6.1 The tourism demand process.

explain precisely why they participate in particular types of tourism, while others, such as Ryan (1997), suggest that tourism is an irrational (and, hence, inexplicable) form of behaviour! Nevertheless, for the purposes of this chapter, it is important to consider three issues or factors that inﬂuence the tourism demand process, namely:

tourist motivation; the inﬂuence of values on consumption; and tourism and consumer culture.

Tourist motivation

Academics and researchers have long been concerned with the questions of why and how people consume or participate in tourism. In particular, attention has been (and continues to be) focused on the ﬁrst stage in the tourism demand process, or what is broadly referred to as tourist motivation. The reason for this is, perhaps, self-evident. Not only is motivation the ‘trigger that sets oﬀ all events in travel’

(Parinello 1993), the process that translates a felt need into goal-oriented behaviour (i.e. tourism) directed at satisfying that need, but also the nature of the felt need inﬂuences the consequential behaviour of the tourists and their potential impact on destinations.

Given the complexity of the subject, it is not surprising that tourist motivation is explored from a variety of perspectives (Sharpley 2003). The key themes that emerge from these perspectives are summarized below, but ﬁrst it is useful to consider so-called ‘tourist typologies’ as descriptors of distinctive forms of tourist consumer behaviour.

Tourist typologies

Tourist typologies are, in essence, lists or categorizations of tourists based on a particular theoretical or conceptual foundation. As such, they tend to be descrip-tive as opposed to predicdescrip-tive, yet they do reflect, if not explain, different motivations, interests and styles of travel on the part of tourists. One of the first such typologies was proposed by Gray (1970) who coined the terms ‘sunlust’ and

‘wanderlust’, where sunlust tourism is essentially resort-based and motivated by the desire for the three Ss – sun, sea and sand. Conversely, wanderlust tourism is typified by the desire to travel and to experience different places, peoples and cultures. Implicit in each term are the characteristics of the different forms of travel and the potential destinational impacts of each.

The distinction between these two types of tourism was expanded on by Cohen (1972) in his widely cited tourist typology based on a ‘familiarity–strangerhood’

continuum. In other words, Cohen suggested that tourists are more or less willing to seek out diﬀerent or novel places and experiences; some travel within an

‘environmental bubble’ of familiarity – they seek out the normal/familiar (food, language, accommodation, fellow tourists) and are unwilling to risk something new or different – whereas others seek out different or unusual experiences. This, in turn, determines how different tourists travel. Some are ‘institutionalized’ inas-much as they depend upon the tourism industry to provide familiar, predictable, organized and packaged holidays; others, conversely, are ‘non-institutionalized’,

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