Dark tourism refers to visiting places where some of the darkest events of human history have unfolded. That can include genocide, assassination, incarceration, ethnic cleansing, war or disaster — either natural or accidental.
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Ashworth (2004) and Ashworth and Hartmann [27] suggested three main reasons for visiting dark sites: curiosity about the unusual, attraction to horror, and a desire for empathy or identification with the victims of atrocity.
Destinations of dark tourism include castles and battlefields such as Culloden in Scotland and Bran Castle and Poienari Castle in Romania; former prisons such as Beaumaris Prison in Anglesey, Wales and the Jack the Ripper exhibition in the London Dungeon; sites of natural disasters or man made disasters, such as ...
Attraction, Accessibility and Amenities are collectively called the 3A concept. These are the 3 basic components of tourism. These help us in figuring out the potential of tourism in a place.
In layman language, in Leiper's model, there are three main elements. In other way they can be called as the main players in tourism system. It is the tourist at first place, at second place it is the geographical features and at third place it is the tourism industry itself.
The consensus between the literature researchers is that dark tourism has a typology depending on the visitors' motivations and sites, namely War/Battlefield Tourism, Disaster Tourism, Prison Tourism, Cemetery Tourism, Ghost Tourism, and Holocaust Tourism.
This form of tourism attracts many visitors and has its economic benefits to those working in the sector and the area where such a destination is located. However, Dark Tourism often goes hand in hand with ethical dilemmas and critiques, such as the gain of economic profits and the behavior of the visitors.
It raises concerns about the moral boundaries of dark tourism and the marketing of places of tragedy and death, while offering them for consumption (Stone, 2009). Selling souvenirs from sites of death effectively commercializes death.
“It depends,” says Granato. Generally, she finds that most archaeologists, academics, and museum curators think that the default answer is “yes, it is ethical” and may possibly question it later. “But I think the default answer should change to 'no'—with the caveat that sometimes it is ethical.”
The term “dark tourism” was coined in 1996, by two academics from Scotland, J.John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, who wrote “Dark Tourism: The Attraction to Death and Disaster.”
Furthermore, World Tourism Organization (2007) explains that the basic elements of a tourist destination composed of 6 elements of attraction, image, accessibility, facilities, human resources, and price.
Experts call the phenomenon dark tourism, and they say it has a long tradition. Dark tourism refers to visiting places where some of the darkest events of human history have unfolded. That can include genocide, assassination, incarceration, ethnic cleansing, war or disaster — either natural or accidental.