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At the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua, luxury is the order of the day. Here on Maui's northwest shore, between two championship golf courses, most guests are lounging poolside reading Malcolm Gladwell or slowly sipping tropical cocktails.

But some of us are choosing to spend the day digging out weeds. It's not even 9 a.m. and here I am, covered in bug spray and ready for a morning of weed-whacking at the nearby Maunalei Arboretum. The mission: to dig out non-native plants and gather native seeds for replanting to renew Hawaii's largest private nature preserve.

"This is a very special place with some rare and endangered species," says Megan Webster, stewardship coordinator of the Pu'u KuKui Watershed Preserve. "We have a crew of six people and we manage 8,000 acres." And now, Ritz-Carlton guests can help too.

Welcome to the newest trend in luxury travel: upscale voluntourism. At a time when many travellers are choosing budget trips, guests at four- and five-star destinations are increasingly interested in worthy causes - from doing ecological work to rebuilding houses in New Orleans. And high-end hotels are responding, bringing carefully curated do-gooding into their guest offerings.

Though voluntourism began in the 1960s, it has broadened in popularity in the past decade; a recent survey suggested that more than three million Americans did some long-distance volunteering last year. And while it has been associated with longer stays in developing countries - away from the trappings of tourism - in the past year, volunteering has become an activity of choice for many luxury vacationers.

David Clemmons, founder of voluntourism.org, suggests two things are inspiring high-end travellers: economic strife and a number of big names doing high-profile charity work. "Extremely wealthy individuals like Bono, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates are putting humongous sums of money into social causes," he says. That's translating into a "consumer consciousness" around social responsibility, he adds, "and a movement within the luxury market to [create] social purpose within their offerings."

In New Orleans, for example, Brad Pitt's work to rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina has helped inspire a wide range of volunteers, including luxury hotel guests. At the four-star JW Marriott New Orleans, the Big Easy Spirit to Serve Voluntourism program matches guests with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity on a project in the city: a day rebuilding a home, for example, in the Musicians' Village of the Upper Ninth Ward.

The hotel prepares a boxed lunch and donates $50 from the package price to Habitat for Humanity. But the guests do their part, too, with hard work starting at 7 a.m. That means "a variety of jobs, such as framing, painting, siding, interior trim work - all the tasks that are necessary to build a home," says Aleis Tusa, communications director for the New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity. The early schedule means they'll wind up by 3 p.m., in time to relax and go sightseeing. And yet "many volunteers come for multiple days," Tusa says.

Tusa's organization also partners

up with the local Ritz-Carlton, which sends business travellers to help build houses as a team-building exercise.

Tour companies, too, have discovered there's a market for combining luxury in exotic destinations with a dollop of social conscience. California-based Exquisite Safaris, for example, creates custom itineraries for places such as Kenya and Vietnam that include a humanitarian element. For example, between watching lions and gnus on the grasslands of the Serengeti, eating gourmet meals and being pampered with spa treatments, guests may spend a morning teaching local children how to read.

Similarly, a 10-day trip to India from U.K.-based tour operator Hands Up Holidays incorporates multi-day projects such as renovation work in a New Delhi slum or a stint in a school helping to teach "India's poorest children." Accommodation, however, is in a five-star hotel throughout. This, says the company, allows travellers to experience the "two extremes of India."

These hotels and tour operators are meeting a new and clear customer demand. "If you want to maintain your relationship with your consumers, which is what the luxury market relies upon," Clemmons says, "then it is imperative to be developing products and services with a social purpose."

Indeed, says Ritz-Carlton Hotels vice-president Sue Stephenson, "We saw guests asking our concierge teams for information about local non-profit organizations." So, in April, the chain launched voluntourism programs at the Kapalua and other hotels around the world. Its 30 projects have matched more than 500 guests with a wide range of activities, from restoring the habitat of the Florida

panther to sorting cans at a Dallas food bank.

In each case, the hotels are signing on with local charities. In Hawaii, the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua partnered with the Maui Land and Pineapple Company, which manages the Pu`u Kukui Watershed Preserve, as well as Ambassadors of the Environment, founded by Jean-Michel Cousteau.

During my visit, Iokepa Nae'ole - local director of Ambassadors of the Environment - led a group into the Maunalei Arboretum high up in the hills overlooking Honolua Bay. Today, this land is rife with foreign plants encroaching on the indigenous alahe'e trees and fiddlehead-like ferns called ama'uma'u. "This is no good," Nae'ole says, pointing to a guava tree, an invasive species that is killing a native koa tree. He strings a marker onto the guava, which will be cut down later that day.

Nearby, guest Sarah Ceccarelli is nibbling on passion fruit. A senior brand manager for a health-food company, she says she's already learned something: "Listening to Kepa describe these plant species," she says, "just reinforces the value of protecting the environment and how we all need to play a role." She turns back and separates some koa and akia seeds harvested during the hike and slips them into a plastic bottle; later in our hike, the seeds will be replanted in the area.

This sort of contribution - eco-conscious volunteering in attractive settings - has proved to be especially popular among luxury guests. Ritz-Carlton's options include feeding and tracking rare iguanas on Grand Cayman. Likewise, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts' Community Conscious Vacations program has guests planting cedars in Bermuda and restoring turtle habitats in Mexico. "Many guests share our commitment to the community and planet and are looking for ways to volunteer," says Fairmont spokesperson Mike Taylor.

But do they need to stay in comfortable resorts to do so? There is an irony in this juxtaposition, especially in developing countries, says Nancy Gard McGehee, an associate professor at Virginia Tech's Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

On the other hand, she suggests that good work is good work. "If this type of experience exposes high-end travellers to volunteer tourism when they otherwise might not have done anything," she says, "then there is great value in these kinds of experiences."

In New Orleans, Tusa says Habitat for Humanity is benefiting from that dynamic. The local organization "has received tremendous support" from its partnership with Marriott, Tusa says, and such connections "give the traveller the option to volunteer without having to do a lot of the groundwork of setting things up."

"These programs," she says, "are doing a lot of good."

Pack your bags

HOTELS

BIG EASY SPIRIT TO SERVE

JW Marriott New Orleans: 614 Canal St.; 1-888-364-1200. Voluntourism details at http://www.marriott.com

hotels/travel/msyjw-jw-marriott-hotel-new-orleans.

GIVE BACK GETAWAYS AND

group VOLUNTEAMING

Ritz-Carlton Kapalua: One Ritz-Carlton Drive, Kapalua, Hawaii; 808- 669-6200. Volunteer

project details at corporate.

ritzcarlton.com/en/About/

GiveBackGetaways.htm.

COMMUNITY CONSCIOUS

VACATIONS Fairmont Hotels

and Resorts. For details of individual hotel projects, visit http://www.fairmont.com/en_fa/

articles/recentnews/

communityconsciousvacations.

htm.

TOUR OPERATORS

EXQUISITE SAFARIS http://www.exquisitesafaris.com. The California-based company offers custom itineraries to 36 countries (expect to pay about $300 U.S. a person a day).

HANDS UP HOLIDAYS http://www.handsupholidays.com. The U.K.-based company offers tours with volunteer components in a dozen countries around the world.

MORE INFORMATION

Online resource for voluntourism: http://www.voluntourism.org.