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."
