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"They all craved physical attention — especially little kids want to be held, picked up," Degnan said. "There's just not enough people to give them enough attention.

"Now that I've done this once, wherever I go, I will always do this."

Melissa Thornley, 35, spent last Christmas break in Honduras, building homes for the poor. She caught a truck every day at 7 a.m. that took her into the mountains, where she worked four or five hours.

"I was doing physical work, but in a way, it was relaxing," said Thornley, managing director for a film editing company in Chicago that produces commercials. "When you're in advertising, we're not really contributing very much . I wanted it to feel like I was doing something good over the holidays."

She booked her trip through i-to-i (http://www.i-to-i.com), a British company that allows tourists to book specific volunteer travel. Among the choices: panda conservation in China, coaching baseball in the Dominican Republic and saving sea turtles in Costa Rica.

Although i-to-i.com has been around since 1994, North American bookings increased more than 300% from 2002 to 2005. Last year, the company arranged 5,000 volunteer vacations worldwide, spokeswoman Amy Kaplan said.

"Vacation travel is all about recharging our batteries," said Randy Wagner, chief marketing officer for Orbitz Worldwide, which owns CheapTickets. "The traditional way is to go to the beach, recharge and you feel great. Now people are telling us that they feel just as great when they give back."

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kimi.yoshino@latimes.com

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