By Sarah Daoud
CAIRO: After the US embassy in Cairo and the Ministry of Tourism launched a new initiative to tap the volunteer tourism market, experts helped brainstorm its marketability in Egypt.
Kristin Lamoureux, director of the George Washington University Institute for International Tourism Studies and expert in volunteer tourism, said she sees great potential for volunteer tourism in Egypt.
“There are so many ways for tourists to get involved and volunteer in Egypt aside from the regular tourist attractions like the Pyramids and Sphinx,” said Lamoureux.
It is all about one-on-one interaction, such as sitting down for coffee or dinner with a local family and getting to know the real people of Egypt to get the full experience, Lamoureux added.
According to a 2009 survey conducted by CMIGreen, 59.1 percent of respondents said they were interested in volunteering during a future trip and 74.4 percent have already volunteered while traveling.
Almost 40 percent said that the availability of volunteer activities dictated where they decided to travel to.
Of those surveyed, about 70 percent said their most important goal of their volunteer travel experience is to “give back” and 58 percent said they continued to be involved with the project they volunteered with after returning home.
Christina Heyniger, founder and president of Xola Consulting and tourism entrepreneurship trainer, said, “People make up tourism and the volunteer tourism industry has a lot of relative and absolute value.”
Heyniger noted that an easy and effective way to market volunteer tourism is through the internet and using online resources, such as idealist.org, responsibletravel.org and stepuptravel.org.
“Having websites creates a central location for interested volunteer tourists as well tourism companies and non-governmental agencies to communicate and plan,” said Heyniger.
“Some countries, like Mozambique, have built SAVE (Scientific, Academic, Volunteer, Educational) centers that specifically deal with the volunteer tourism industry and I believe that Egypt could really benefit by having one as well,” added Lamoureux.
Lamoureux commented that volunteer tourism should not be looked at as charity work where destinations say “Here comes a tourist, give me money,” but as an exchange, both culturally and financially.
One thing that should be taken into consideration, said Heyniger, is the “why not me” mindset that may develop in volunteer destinations.
“In Cambodia, one village got more attention for volunteer tourism than another and the neglected village wondered why not me and why the other village was getting more attention than theirs,” said Heyniger.
Both experts stressed the need for the public and private sector to collaborate and create a partnership to organize experiences in an efficient and safe manner.
Lamoureux noted that some NGOs have already capitalized on this industry in an economical way by charging for the activities they coordinate for volunteer tourists which generates more funds for them as well as creates a reputation for their organization.
“Good NGOs should have staff dedicated to this market to organize these activities to benefit the organization financially as well as the volunteer tourists and host countries,” Lamoureux added.
In a survey conducted in 2007 by Travelocity.com, an online travel agency, volunteer vacations were at 38 percent, up 11 percent from 2006.
Ypartnership, America’s leading hospitality marketing agency, reported in 2006 that over 5 million households took a volunteer vacation.
Both Lamoureux and Heyniger noted that there is a need and market for volunteer tourism, but it just needs to be marketed for countries, such as Egypt, to benefit.
