voluntourism
noun
voluntourism is a noun meaning “A type of tourism which combines traditional travel and tourism with volunteer work. Travelers are given opportunities to contribute money and/or…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-O-L-U-N-T-O-U-R-I-S-M, and it appears about once in every 33 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does voluntourism mean?
noun
- 1
A type of tourism which combines traditional travel and tourism with volunteer work. Travelers are given opportunities to contribute money and/or time to causes related to their destinations.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is voluntourism?
Voluntourism appears about once in every 33 million words in written English, the 176,009th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Voluntourism in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense type of tourism:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | voluntourisme |
| German | Voluntourismus |
| Spanish | volunturismo |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does voluntourism come from?
Blend of volunteer + tourism with haplology.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).