The demographic profiles of volunteer tourists are comparable to those of adventure tourism. The demographic profile of volunteer tourists is mainly represented by young people free from responsibilities, for example university/gap year students aged between 18 and 25 Novelli. Mintel agrees with Novelli and goes on to add that most projects are suitable for gap year students, which is why they dominate the volunteer market. Young professionals/young professionals between the ages of 25 and 39 and baby boomers are also considered participants in volunteer tourism. Similarly, Mintel indicates that the demographic profiles of adventure tourist participants are primarily baby boomers aged 50 and above, millennials aged 18 to 35, families and couples, and who are primarily female. The age categories of volunteer tourism are very similar to the age categories of adventure tourism, although the older generation dominates adventure tourism, while the younger generation dominates volunteer tourism. Volunteering and adventure tourism are similar because participants must be more financially stable to take part in both niches because volunteering and adventure tourism are often more expensive than an average vacation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Previous research indicates that people are motivated to engage in volunteering and adventure tourism for several reasons, which can be considered motivating factors for travel. The push and pull factors for travel and destination are the motivation behind tourism. For decades, volunteer tourism has become one of the fastest growing forms of travel in the world, encouraged by the driving force of alternative tourism and the pulling power of alternative tourism. need to volunteer. Unlike voluntary tourism, adventure tourism is encouraged by the pull factor of excitement and adrenaline. Although some authors might argue that the risk of the activity is what motivates participants to engage in adventure tourism, voluntary tourism participants are generally motivated by altruistic and personal reasons. For example, professionals are motivated to participate in this form of niche tourism because of the networking opportunities, competitive advantage in the job market, to gain work experience, etc. While personal motivation reasons may include, to add value to a CV, a desire to learn more about the culture of the host community and a desire to give back, etc. In contrast, it has been stated by Mintel that health and wellbeing is the primary motivator for adventure tourism participants over 60, however Giddy claims it is the thrill of adventure. Wearing and Grabowski state that there are four main points as to why individuals are motivated to participate in volunteer tourism. These points include the authenticity of interacting with people of a different culture, the search for mutual friendship and trust between people, family ties, and the need for modification. Compared to voluntary tourism participants, adventure tourists are also motivated to participate to internally overcome fear, externally appreciate the beauty of nature, and generally enjoy time spent together as a family, etc. And even adventure tourists are motivated to mentally and physically challenge themselves. One similarity between volunteerism and adventure tourism is baby boomer participants.Who are both motivated by the same reasons to commit to trying new adventures/activities because their career commitments and family life didn't have time for it, however, now that they're kids are gone, they have enough money and time to spend on travel and take part in adventures/activities. Another similarity between the two niche areas of tourism is gap year/college students and millennials who fall almost in the same age range. The gap year/college student age range starts from 18 to 25 years old, while the Millennials age range also starts at 18 years old but still ends at 35 years old. However, they are motivated by different reasons to engage in the two forms of niche tourism. Millennials are motivated to engage in adventure tourism due to their keen interest in experiencing life, living in another country, and expanding their knowledge while traveling, while gap year participants/college students in tourism volunteer who are motivated to offer their services to make a positive tourism contribution to the community and also acquire the skills needed to pursue their ideal career paths. Regarding the research conducted by Soderman and Snead, in Guttentag it is found that gap year students are motivated to give back to the community because of the personal benefits they obtain. In other words, this implies that if the benefits of volunteering were not present, gap year students would likely not be motivated to participate in volunteering. Although volunteer tourism predominantly presents many positive benefits for communities, there are however some negative impacts that volunteer tourism presents. . In this section, the socio-cultural challenges of voluntary tourism to destinations will be discussed. Neglecting the needs of host communities is one of the negative impacts that volunteer tourism presents. Lyons and Wearing say that not all organizations are interested in making a profit. He continued by emphasizing that non-profit organizations (NGOs) are not interested in profit but rather are concerned with meeting the needs and desires of their host communities. However, some studies indicate that private organizations are pressured to attract more volunteers to increase their profits rather than respect the needs and wishes of host communities. This is evident in an Ecuadorian village, where volunteer tourists painted the villagers' homes while they were at work, which the villagers strongly disapproved of. This example shows that the volunteer program was not designed in line to respond to the real needs of the local people, rather the organization assumed that it knew the needs and desires of the local people without consulting them first. Volunteering does not require any skills to participate in, as a result an organization often places pre-medical volunteers in programs for which they are not professionally trained because volunteering does not require any skills to participate in. This can be very deadly for host communities as volunteers provide medical care and are not trained to do so. This leads the locals to resent the volunteers. Another negative impact is the decrease in “job demand and the promotion of dependency”. Volunteers who offer their services for free can financially disturb host communities because locals are disempowered by volunteer tourists who often carry out jobs, for example, building schools, which can instead be done by local people to enable them to earn a living. This, therefore, prevents.3-11.