Where Adventure meets Voluntourism

Well, for my Master’s Degree research in ‘05-’06 I posed the question: “What are the issues for developing an adventure service tourism product in Peru that is economically viable, environmentally conscientious, culturally respectful and politically acceptable?”  Basically, I was looking to combine where I was at in my life w/some established body of knowledge.  Sustainable tourism seemed to be a logical place to start.  I always loved adventure, was serving in the Peace Corps, and intrigued with the concept of giving back while on vacation.  If you’re really interested, you can read the whole paper here called ‘Sustainable Tourism Realities: A Case for  Adventure Service Tourism’.  Yes, I did include a colon in the title.

The conclusions weren’t anything too earth shattering…  the issues  extracted from the two cases (coffee tourism, adventure conservation) are categorized according to a tour operator’s commitment to sustainable tourism, and relevance to economic, ecological, socio-cultural and political aspects.  Five best practices are given on how to successfully do adventure service tourism:

1) inventory resources

2) know the reality

3) pilot projects

4) build a network and

5) monitor and evaluate.

Ok.  Enough theoretical talk. I’ve tried to take my own advice while launching WAVES.  So far it seems to be working…