Dark tourism (alsothanatourism,black tourism,morbid tourism, orgrief tourism) has been defined astourism involving travel to places historically associated withdeath andtragedy.[1] More recently, it was suggested that the concept should also include reasons tourists visit that site, since the site's attributes alone may not make a visitor a "dark tourist".[2] The main attraction to dark locations is their historical value rather than their associations with death and suffering.[2][3]Holocaust tourism contains aspects of both dark tourism andheritage tourism.[4]
While there is a long tradition of people visiting recent and ancient settings of death, such as travel togladiator games in the Romancolosseum, attending public executions bydecapitation, and visiting thecatacombs, this practice has been studied academically only relatively recently.
Travel writers were the first to describe their tourism to deadly places.P. J. O'Rourke called his travel toWarsaw,Managua, andBelfast in 1988 'holidays in hell',[5] or Chris Rojek talking about 'black-spot' tourism in 1993[6] or the 'milking the macabre'.[7][8]Academic attention to the subject originated inGlasgow, Scotland: The term 'dark tourism' was coined in 1996 by Lennon and Foley, two faculty members of the Department of Hospitality, Tourism & Leisure Management atGlasgow Caledonian University,[1] and the term 'thanatourism' was first mentioned by A. V. Seaton in 1996, then Professor of Tourism Marketing at theUniversity of Strathclyde.[9]
As of 2014, there have been many studies on definitions, labels, and subcategorizations, such asHolocaust tourism and slavery-heritage tourism, and the term continues to be molded outside academia by authors of travel literature.[10] There is very littleempirical research on the perspective of the dark tourist.[2]Dark tourism has been formally studied from three main perspectives by a variety of different disciplines:
Scholars in this interdisciplinary field have examined many different aspects. Lennon and Foley expanded their original idea[1] in their first book, deploring that "tact and taste do not prevail over economic considerations" and that the "blame for transgressions cannot lie solely on the shoulders of the proprietors, but also upon those of the tourists, for without their demand there would be no need to supply."[11]
Whether a tourist attraction is educational or exploitative is defined by both its operators and its visitors.[12] Tourism operators motivated by greed can "milk the macabre"[7] or reexamine tragedies for a learning experience. Tourists consuming dark tourism products may desecrate a place and case studies are needed to probe who gains and loses.[13]Chris Hedges criticized the "Alcatraz narrative as presented by theNational Park Service" as "whitewashing", because it "ignores the savagery and injustice of America's system of mass incarceration". By omitting challenging details, the park service furthers a "Disneyfication", per Hedges.[14]
Destinations of dark tourism include castles and battlefields such asCulloden in Scotland andBran Castle andPoienari Castle in Romania; formerprisons such asBeaumaris Prison inAnglesey, Wales and theJack the Ripper exhibition in theLondon Dungeon; sites ofnatural disasters orman made disasters, such asHiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan,[15]Chernobyl in Ukraine[16][17][18] and the commercial activity atGround Zero in New York one year afterSeptember 11, 2001.[19] It also includes sites of human atrocities, murders, andgenocide, such as theAuschwitz concentration camp in Poland,[20] theNanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in China, theTuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia; the sites of theJeju uprising in South Korea[12] and the Spirit Lake Internment Camp Centre nearLa Ferme, Quebec as an example ofCanada's internment operations of 1914–1920.[21]After theBroken Arrow murders, the home of the Bever family became a center for dark tourism by ghost hunters, urban legend seekers, teenagers, trespassers and vandals.[22]
InBali, "death and funeral rites have becomecommodified for tourism... where enterprising businesses begin arranging tourist vans and sell tickets as soon as they hear someone is dying."[23] In the U.S., visitors can tour theHolocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., "with an identity card which matches their age and gender with that of a name and photo of a real holocaust victim. Against a backdrop of video interpretation portraying killing squads in action, the pseudo-Holocaust victim enters a personal ID into monitors as they wander around the attraction to discover how their real-life counterpart is faring."[24] In Colombia, places associated withPablo Escobar, the drug lord from theMedellín Cartel, became hotspots for dark tourism through Escobar-themed tours. In Medellín, visitors frequent Roberto Escobar's private museum of his infamous brother, the house where he was killed, andLa Catedral, Escobar's prison. Another famous place is theHacienda Nápoles estate located between Bogotá and Medellín, nearPuerto Triunfo.[25]
(P 142)The leisure forms constructed around black spots certainly give signs of repetition-compulsion and seeking the duplication of experience. (p170) The gravity and solemnity of Black Spots have been reduced by moves to make them more colorful and more spectacular than other sights on the tourist trail. For example, in 1987 the government of Thailand unveiled plans to restore the famous Death Railway …
{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)One of the most disturbing phenomena in Bali is the commercialization of cremation ceremonies.
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