The Story Of Voluntourism : Carrying The World 's Solutions Essay

Tourism is an endeavour sought by an individual or a party of individuals, which leads to a movement from one place to another with the idealism of a specific task, to visit a place or several places with the primary purpose of achieving entertainment and increasing knowledge of countries, cultures, and their history. The expression ‘largest industry in the world’ is universally used with mention to tourism, ensuring its recognition as the largest generator of wealth (over 11.7% of the global gross domestic product) and employment (7% of the world’s jobs); this shows that tourism is indeed an important industry that depends on culture and legacy.(Budeanu, 2002) Vancouver is feasibly one of the most prevalent tourist destinations in Canada

In considering our current issue in society, people wonder if heroin clinics are a good or bad idea towards solving the problem, the increased use of heroin. Heroin is a psychoactive drug that is synthesized from morphine and is known to be highly addictive. Not only does heroin produce pleasurable effects for the user, but it can be potentially dangerous due to the user being unaware of the drugs purity and with tolerance developing rapidly, it poses an increased chance of overdosing. Based on European and Canadian models, advocates argue that the clinics will help provide addicts with a safe place to use, prevent the spread of disease and overdose deaths, and increase the odds that a drug user will return to a productive life. I could not agree anymore with this alternative way of treating this epidemic of increased heroin abuse. I believe heroin clinics will not only help

Propaganda is a very useful tool to spread a message to influence people to support an ideology. That is what the NSDAP, Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or National Socialist German Workers’ Party in English, utilized to spread their message and gain support for their views of German nationalism, supremacy of race, and volkgemeinschaft meaning people’s community. Hitler saw propaganda as a way to pave his way to power and to indoctrinate the German people to follow him, to see him as a hero and a savior to the master Aryan race, and support the racist, and radical views of the Nazi ideology cult.

Voluntourism is a modern-day exhibition of imperialism. Patrick H. O’Neil (2010, p. 234) defines imperialism as “…the system whereby a state extends its power to directly control territory, resources, and people beyond its borders”. Voluntourism chains travel with voluntary work, drawing individuals seeking a tourist experience that will positively benefit the society and their personal development (Raymond and Hall 2008, p. 530) “Getting your hands dirty is a selling point” (McGloin & Georgeou 2015, p. 407) and at the heart it’s an individual’s desire to help others. However, unintentionally, the

From the view of a native Antiguan, tourism is not as glamourous as it is perceived to be. For the tourist that visits the island it is of lush lands and beautiful waters but the natives only see the environmental and cultural mess they create. Kincaid arises the idea that the average tourist is unware of what their impact is on their country, “You see yourself, you see yourself. You must not wonder what exactly happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it. You must not wonder where your bath water went when you pulled the stopper. You must not wonder what happened when you brushed your teeth” (p. 13-14). She describes the tourists to be unaware and disconnected with their impact on their island. The tourist’s effect on the island is a negative one and their waste from food to bodily functions spoils their land. Though it may only be a short time for tourist it is a lifetime impact for the lives in Antigua. Nevertheless, tourism carries the economy in Antigua but the natives do not view it in that such way.

There are two types of propaganda: sociological propaganda; the spreading of an ideology through the mass media, and political propaganda; efforts that are sponsored by governments and political groups that alter a persons’ interests. All propaganda has a direction, and the overall quality determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect over the masses. Our entire nation is a vast propaganda operational system that is greatly linked to education, consumerism and politics. A great deal of what makes up propaganda and how it is placed among the masses lies in understanding the overall emotional and physical states of these groups of people and in finding a way to draw a persons’ attention to capture their hearts, breaking down

The Travel and Tourism industry is still one of the largest single businesses in world commerce and its importance is widely recognized. The tourism industry is now one of the largest sectors earning foreign exchange. In the face of many benefits, many countries have started assigning due weight age to the tourism industry in their national development agenda. Tourism is an industry that operates on a massively broad scale: it embraces activities ranging from the smallest sea-side hotel; to air-lines, multi-national hotel chains and major international tour operators. Originally, non-traditional industries such as tourism emerged as a solution to strike a balance between ecology and industry

Slum tourism is becoming an emerging trend now, especially in developing countries. In fact, it has become one of the fastest growing market in the tourism industry. One of the reasons for that is due to the expansion of slum in developing countries. Frenzel et al., (2015) argue that as the number of locations has increased in the past 20 years, so has the number of tourists participating in slum tourism. They then presented a graph on the rise of slum tourism and the estimated numbers of tourists per year. It all begins in the 90s, where South Africa and Brazil had first developed slum tourism. It then moves to North America, where Mexico was involved in around 1995. During the early 20s, the expansion of countries arrived in Asia. The number of slum tourist destinations has continued increased and has later transformed into a type of tourism. This indeed could generate income especially with developing countries that are heavily rely on tourism. As Frenzel (2013) states that slum tourism could contribute to development by creating a variety sources of income and non-material benefits. These benefits are not actually benefiting the community but acts as a form of exploitation instead. As a result, this paper argues how slum tourism is being portrayed as a form of exploitation through poverty, the ethics in participating in slum tourism and how it does not lead to economic development.

While I was thinking why anthropologists should study tourism and how they can contribute to it, I realized that actually anthropologists have a lot in common with tourists: they both are outsiders who spend time exploring the cultural features of another society. However, more often tourism was seen to be an activity of economics, rather than of people. It happened due to the widespread lack of awareness of the sociocultural significance of tourism.

This essay will discuss whether international organisations have an important role to play in the planning and development of tourism. Using relevant examples of international organisations such as UNWTO and UNESCO, this essay will analyse how these types of organisations contribute towards the planning and development of tourism. By using Gran Canaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and the UK as case studies, the essay will produce a clear analogy of how international organisations get involved to help plan, develop and preserve tourist destinations in the hope of a more sustainable future.

When looking at the relationship between tourism and work as depicted in the documentary Life and Dept (2001) that was watched in class, one must first understand that tourism is a recent phenomenon. It is something that has just recently been made available and affordable to the everyday citizen. With this rather new development, tourism has become one of the largest industries in the world in term of revenue. This industry is so large that it employs "one in six workers in the Caribbean" (Gentry 2007).

The purpose of community empowerment in tourism is to bring about cohesion among a community to promote economic growth, communal involvement, and political awareness. Based on these three factors, it has been discovered that each factor utilizes one another to be successful when tourism is involved. For a community to be more sustainable, many aspects come into play, as stated above. Tourism allows wealth to be injected into a community in a variety of ways. The great benefit of the tourism industry is that it is tremendously labor intensive, and many of the businesses that operate within it are only small, local businesses. For a budding tourist destination, there is a vast range of benefits. It is also great for tourists, because with a blooming tourism industry, there is an abundance of things to do, a sufficient amount of places to stay at, and as an outcome, more visitors are drawn to the location. Without these factors working together, sustainability would be difficult to achieve within a community. Communal empowerment consists of multiple aspects that need to work together to bring about effective, sustainable tourism, one of which is economic progress.

In a 2011 Catholic US Expert Eyewitness editor’s interview, Rick Steves summarizes the importance of travel in a simple and elegant quote stating “living life without traveling is like having a good book and never turning the page.” Within the interview Steves stresses the importance of travel for all beings, citing the immense individual growth that stems from what he defines as “good travel.” Becoming a good traveler, according to Steves, means fitting in and learning to appreciate and understand the cultures of the individuals that surround you when traveling. Politically and spiritually, Steves finds this type of travel to be a stimulating experience that enlightens one to a wide array of virtues and cultures that range from exciting and thought provoking to even depressing. However, while Steves notes the positives that precipitate from the aforementioned good travel, he also expresses his disappointment in the many Americans who fail to partake in this enlightened practice. Instead, driven by short term goals and individual economic success, Steves notes many people refrain entirely from travel, or simply choose to travel in a demanding and ethnocentric manner. According to Steves, this self-perpetuating cycle of individuality and greed mirrors the larger image of societal values today. Unfortunately, such values promote the sacrifice of economic justice, and global common good on behalf individual gains. However, for Steves, through good travel the intertwining

Volunteer tourism- also known as “Voluntourism”- is part of a new alternative market of tourism. It consists of tourists taking part in volunteer oppportunities while they go on vacation, usually in a developing country. (Hanson Pastran 2014) While this sounds like a positive idea, and it can be, it is important to consider the efficacy (or lack thereof) of voluntourism, and the fact that it could potentially perpetuate more harm than good. It can be hard to believe that a concept like voluntourism- that was supposedly built on the premises of helping people- could be a negative concept. It isn’t always negative, it can in fact be beneficial when it is done in a correct manner. However, in this paper I will be arguing that despite some of the cases in which voluntourism has proven to be effective and beneficial, there are numerous ways in which it can be not only ineffective- but also harmful. The harm is not caused through the physical volunteer work itself, but instead through the negative stereotypes of the Global South that are perpetuated by the agencies that organize these volunteer trips, as well as the neocolonialist tendencies that are displayed by those volunteer agencies- by Me to We in particular. The neocolonialism is evident through not only the actions of the organizers of the trips, but also through the marketing for Me to We. By perpetuating these kinds of messages in their advertising, harm is done to the impressionable youth that are exposed to this.

Tourism business in the Third World it has quickly developed, but it has also arrived a crossed with numerous adversities familiar to other externally-oriented development strategies, as well as: extreme unfamiliar reliance, the support of socioeconomic and space inequity, environmental devastation, and increasing cultural separation. There are many types of tourism which move the people of the cities and one of them is favelas 'tourism. Favelas are precarious or informal settlements that grow around or inside the same big cities. Favelas are settlements which lack of property rights, and constitute agglomerations of very low housing. They began to run in 1990s, and over the years have incorporated new areas. People living in these places suffer basic needs of urban and social services equipment. They are also located in geologically unsuitable and environmentally sensitive areas. In these places is also a high incidence of crime. The favelas offer opportunities for jobs, trade.-"For analysis purposes, I have divided reality tours into two main types: ‘‘social tours” and ‘‘dark tours”. It is important to note, nevertheless, that the boundaries between the two kinds of tours are often far from evident on the empirical ground.” (2) Social tourist sells participation and information and authentic tourist trips to the Favelas, whereas the dark tours sell the poverty and the misery of the Favelas - tourism performance in impoverished areas. Social or reality tours allow the