One of the more recent forms of tourism to emerge is what has become known as Volunteer Tourism, the practice of individuals going on a working holiday, volunteering their labour for worthy causes. While volunteering is a well-established activity, the combination with tourism is relatively new and has already changed considerably over a very short period. This paper reviews the process by which volunteer tourism has developed, focusing on its transformation from an individual altruistic endeavour to a more commercial form of conventional tourism. The paper reviews the growth in number of websites devoted to volunteer tourism, and discusses the changes that have taken place in the content and focus of these websites, the locations used as destinations and the organisations they represent over the last two decades. It is apparent that over the last two decades the organisations offering volunteer tourist vacations have increasingly focused their attention on conventional commercial tourism markets which is a similar pattern of evolution to that of ecotourism. The paper concludes that volunteer tourism is likely to become increasingly diverse in scale, distribution and focus in the future, in the same way as ecotourism has broadened its market and appeal, but in so doing, will lose more of the distinctive features that characterized its initial form.

Volunteer tourism as a phenomenon and as a market has come a long way since its ideologically driven early days. It is now an established and ever commercialised market that meets the demand for a different travel experience for the more morally conscious traveller, while at the same time it provides opportunities for economic gain for the organisations that act as brokers of such experiences. This interaction raises several ethical issues in terms of serving a mission while making economic gains. In general, there is an acceptable relationship between monetary gain and altruistic service, within the context of enlightened self-interest provided that the beneficiary of economic gains diverts profits into serving their mission. This paper examines the supply for volunteer tourism for evidence of commercialisation and profit-driven behaviour and investigates a relationship between monetary gain and serving a mission by creating public goods.

Using data collected from 9,508 volunteer tourists, we employ Critical Incident Technique to identify and explore the volunteers’ experience and how this affects the liminality of their journeys. What becomes apparent is that the liminality of the experience can have uncertain outcomes as volunteer tourists have to navigate living conditions, culture, operational differences, and feelings of marginalisation and vulnerability, all while feeling powerless to make meaningful change. As such, volunteer-sending organisations should be mindful of the use of transformation within the marketing of their programmes, given the highly individualised experiences of volunteers. The use of transformation should be fine-tuned to the individual, their expectations, and the contribution they wish to make.

Using narrative inquiry, the purpose of this research is to explore volunteer involvement at a mega-sports event (MSE). It responds to a call for research to provide insight into the background of MSE volunteers (Baum and Lockstone, Int J Event Manag Res 3(1):29–41, 2007). This need reflects the limitations of past MSE volunteer studies that have at a large extent merely generated large lists of expectations and motivations through a predominantly survey-based approach. The context used for this study is the Frontrunner pre-event volunteer programme for the (Glasgow, Mission, vision and values, 2014) Commonwealth Games, and a narrative approach is applied allowing the volunteer experience to be considered from both the individual and group perspectives. The stories suggest that the individuals arrive at volunteering at (Glasgow, Mission, vision and values, 2014) as a result of a dynamic process informed by the pragmatist school of thought. The stories also highlight the underlying meaning of volunteers’ involvement through consideration of past lived experiences.