Marketing and communication of responsibility in volunteer tourism

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether volunteer tourism organisations are prepared to learn from feedback on the quality of their responsibility communications, and consider whether analysis and communication of results can influence market improvement. Design/methodology/approach – A purposive sample of five influential website pages of eight volunteer tourism organisations are scored across 19 responsible voluntourism criteria, and compared against the results of two years previously. Findings – The authors report mixed results on how communicating results has encouraged change and industry improvement in responsibility, based on previous research that showed responsibility to be communicated inconsistently at best, potentially greenwashing at worst, across organisations, product types and responsible values. Research limitations/implications – The paper applies sustainability marketing literature to explain the changes in responsibility communication performance using an innovative tool to benchmark and audit responsibility in online marketing content and providing insight into how best practice marketing necessitates responsible operations. This paper considers whether and how, when presented with evidence, organisations choose to improve for a more responsible voluntourism offer. Originality/value – The paper is original in providing a practical, industry-informed analysis of the reasons why volunteer operators communicate in the way they do, and the ability to influence their communications to be more reliable, in the context of increased criticism for shallow volunteering. This experiment allows industry associations and lobby groups to influence industry practice based on the evidence that improved communications are possible when specific, tailored advice is provided

A reply to the response by Mark Griffiths to theJOSTSpecial Issue on Volunteer Tourism

“…We deliberately used the journal article to provide robust evidence, in order to then engage with the eight companies, as reported in the conclusions, so they were aware of their shortcomings and given an opportunity to reflect, learn and improve their communications. In Smith and Font (2015) we report the outcomes of the process after two years, and in doing so consider whether the exercise and analysis could influence market improvement.…”

“…Some organisations with quality product are better signalling responsibility, while others are pulling back from over-positioning and communicating with less emotive hyperbole and more realistically where product is less responsible volunteer-related and more holiday-oriented, and in so doing improving their responsibility; and some were surprised at their poor performance but had the data to provide evidence for their claims, and the control over their websites to adjust and improve the content. Smith and Font (2015) provide extensive industry intelligence and an unusually high level of industry detail for an academic study to explain why these companies may have repositioned their management and communication practices to respond to the agency of volunteers.…”

Assessing Online Sustainability Communication of Italian Cultural Destinations – A Web Content Mining Approach

“…In this direction, destination marketing and communications tools can be used to influence tourists' decision-making and organizations' websites are the most researched channels of sustainability communication. Smith and Font [15,16] investigated the responsible tourism communication messages provided by volunteer tour operators. Through online content analysis, they analyze and score the organizations' webpages across 19 responsibility criteria (including donations, local conservation, respect heritage, respect wild-life, etc.).…”