Abstract:
Volunteer tourism discourse seems to have a disproportionate emphasis on the
guest at the expense of the host. This trend seems to be replicated in the
Ghanaian studies although it is well understood that without host support,
tourism cannot be sustainable. Thus, this inquiry sought to examine the host
guest relationship from the lens of the host, mainly from the relatively
unexplored dimensions of language, power and reciprocity. In-depth
interviews and focus group discussions were used to solicit data from forty
three participants in the Asebu community from November 2015 to April
2016. The data was analyzed using QDA miner, to bring out the themes and
patterns in the transcript. The results indicate that the host has different
perspectives towards the international volunteer tourist. These perspectives
appear to be shaped by the degree of host involvement in the volunteer
tourism enterprise.
The findings revealed a spectrum of attitudes toward the guest which ranged
from tolerance, indifference to suspicion. It was established that the host
uncertainty about the motives of the guest was predicated on resident’s
perceptions of direct benefits from volunteer tourism. Based on the findings, it
was concluded that host perspectives of the volunteer tourist is function of
contact factors which either enabled or mitigated interactions. It was
recommended that the volunteer tourism organisation consider addressing the
feelings of uncertainty among the host, by giving communities enough
information about the motives and activities of the volunteer tourists.
