"Going with the flaw" a Voluntourism Perspective

Dissertação de Mestrado em Gestão e Internacionalização de EmpresasGenerally defined as an activity in which people decide to volunteer in development or conservation projects, voluntourism is one of the fastest growing alternative tourism markets, arousing interest among several different people and creating an increasing number of volunteers. This development is being used by many organizations as a way of using volpertise as an important asset. Our work analyses and describes the concept of voluntourism, as well as the motivations that drives the volunteers, and the impacts or benefits of the experience of their projects in the host community and in themselves. We did a literature review, firstly using a bibliometric analysis where three main concepts were found, to deeply understand and categorize the generic concept. Secondly, we did ten exploratory online interviews to volunteers with experiences in international volunteering programs and after a quantitative study with 65 Portuguese international volunteers. The results show that this topic has become a trend in recent years and that understanding the motivations of volunteers as well as the benefits and impacts of the projects is essential to the development of voluntourism and can be used by the projects managers to deeply understand the volunteers