Paper Contents
Abstract
Volunteer tourism, often referred to as voluntourism, has emerged over the past two decades as a dynamic intersection of travel and social contribution. It offers individuals opportunities to immerse themselves in new cultural contexts while participating in projects that address local needs across education, environment, healthcare, and community development. Traditionally, the motivations for international volunteering have been driven by altruism, cultural immersion, and the pursuit of meaningful experiences that extend beyond leisure. However, as the tourism industry enters an era shaped by digital transformation, the role of emergent technologies offers a new dimension to the voluntourism experience. Within this shift, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to play a transformative role, offering both opportunities and challenges for international volunteering organizations, host communities, and volunteers themselves.The overarching theme of the book AI-Driven Storytelling and Personalisation in Volunteer Tourism provides a timely framework for understanding how technology intersects with the human values of compassion, empathy, and intercultural collaboration. Storytelling has always been central to volunteer tourismshaping how experiences are designed, how narratives are shared, and how communities are represented. Personalisation, meanwhile, has been a growing trend in the broader tourism sector, enabling providers to tailor experiences that match individual preferences and motivations. AI sits at the core of these developments, offering tools such as machine learning algorithms, natural language processing, and predictive analytics that refine how stories are told and how volunteer experiences are curated at a global scale.
Copyright
Copyright © 2025 Jathin H Ghante. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
