Introduction
Dark tourism is the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme. This is not a new phenomenon. For many years now dark tourism has been part of our fascination, dating back to the pilgrims. Now however we seek it for very different reasons. Most recently ‘Ground Zero’ in America, marking the collapse of the twin towers, has become an essential part of the ever expanding dark tourism sector.
Original article: Dark Tourism: A Fine Line Between Curiosity and Exploitation by The Travelzine for today’s Vagabond , Tuesday Edition / October 28, 2008
Essay by David Ekesong
Master in Tourism Destination Management student 2008/2009
The article refers to different types of tourism that may be categorized as dark tourism. The different types of dark tourism include Grief Tourism which is a kind of sightseeing that many of us have been doing naturally for years. Basically, you can define grief tourism as being when you travel somewhere to visit a scene of some tragic event; Disaster Tourism refers to an onslaught of visitors following some kind of natural disaster, such as those visiting south-east Asia following the 2004 tsunami crisis, or people travelling to New Orleans to see the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, are both examples of disaster tourism; Poverty Tourism which usually features tours to slum areas and poverty stricken towns; Suicide Tourism Which generally takes two forms. The first involves people travelling to a particular destination with the intention of committing suicide, often by jumping from a famous landmark. Statistics prove that a significant proportion of suicide cases at well-known tourist attractions are tourists, although it’s not clear whether their trip was planned around this.
A second form of suicide tourism takes into account the various laws related to euthanasia in different countries. For example, in several European countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, active euthanasia is not illegal, and terminally-ill people sometimes travel there to end their life legally; Doomsday Tourism which has to do with the belief that the end of the world is coming, Or at the very least, the end of certain tourist attractions is coming. Doomsday tourism refers to the thinking that you should hurry up and visit particular places which are under threat, usually as a result of environmental problems and globing warming.
While I have nothing against those who get involved in one form of dark tourism or another, I find it rather ironic that tourism which contributes enormously to emissions and thus global warming still grows in the wake of its own impact. In other words, the notion of global warming being a tourism attraction while tourism itself is contributing to the global warming phenomena is not only preposterous but outrageous to say the least.
Thanks for the Vagabondish.com mention, David. It’s always interesting to see further discussion of our posts.
The article you wrote on dark tourism is very interesting. I think that most people who visit those places are really interested in the history. Most people go to places for educational experiences on the fact that they experience in one way or another what happened in the past and this shows them on how not to do certain things.
How is this considered an essay by yourself? 80% of what you have here is taken word for word from the article, the only form of orginality i see here is your last paragraph of words!
Hi,
I was just wondering what your views on the positive and negative impacts of Dark Tourism are. Do you believe Dark Tourism is sustainable in a positive sense or is there a danger of giving the ‘wrong message’?
Thanks
which is why the original essay is alluded to! This was intended to be a discursive commentary on the original article!
hi my name is jacqueline from south africa . i am currently doing research on the sustainability of dark sites . i am in some serious neeeed of help
hi Briana . I am live in south africa and soweto were the apartheid saga was more prevelant due to the fact that most meetings and riots took olace there , with what i see now is that it can be sustained in a positive way provided they try and keep the interpretation and developments as authentic as possible.
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