TravelMole Guest Comment: The outlook for gap year travel
Dr. Peter Slowe, founder and director of Projects Abroad www.projects-abroad.co.uk, shares his predictions for the gap year market in 2011.
“I believe we are going to witness some key trends emerging in the coming year from the gap year travel sector. Gap year travel is being thrust back into the spotlight as its popularity continues to rise, despite what some critics have recently suggested.
David Cameron’s idea of the ‘big society’ to empower communities, along with his ring-fencing of the budget for third world aid, are key topical areas that will continue to hit the headlines in 2011. This is a strong political background for volunteering in developing communities. It is also exactly the right time to boost your CV through volunteering because these days graduates need to stand out from the crowd. All this will help to ensure the continuing popularity of volunteering projects in 2011.
In 2010, Projects Abroad witnessed a 35% rise in the uptake of projects over 2009. This is already evidence that the Government’s planned rise in tuition fees has not adversely affected the popularity of gap year projects in 2011 as recent headlines would have us believe.
I expect to see a growing trend towards short-term summer volunteering projects, especially our two-week specials. These will appeal to younger students looking to enhance their UCAS forms and older students in some cases saving their full gap year until after university. Short-term placements also appeal to the employed looking for an alternative to a conventional summer holiday, where they can do something useful and improve their CV at the same time.
It is important that gap year providers ensure projects like these are really useful to the communities where the volunteers work in spite of the short time frame involved. In most cases, short term projects provide a taste of the volunteer experience that inspires people to come back for more, but that’s not enough. Projects Abroad at least makes absolutely sure that short-term projects are worthwhile and significant in themselves.
Students will continue to be a main target for gap year travel but I believe that the emerging trends will continue – towards people in work taking career-breaks to volunteer and people who have retired using their new free time to volunteer. Also newly-married couples opting for volunteering projects instead of the typical beach honeymoon is already rising in popularity in the US and we expect to see it also emerging in the UK in 2011.
There has already been a rapid rise in the uptake of projects in Africa for 2011, with higher numbers for everywhere south of the Sahara – Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Togo. We have found that as many as 45% of Projects Abroad volunteers are heading here, up from 38% last year. Conservation projects also continue to be very popular which can be attributed to the fact that green issues are now very much back on people’s radars."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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