Dark tourism and World Heritage Sites: a Delphi study of stakeholder perceptions of the development of dark tourism products

Abstract

Dark tourism has attracted increasing academic attention, but the extent to which it exists as a separate form of tourism from heritage tourism is not yet clear. Despite the growth of UNESCO World Heritage Site designations, little research has considered the relationship between dark tourism and World Heritage Sites. Because the development of dark tourism is beset with ethical concerns, heritage professionals can have negative perceptions about the acceptability or attractiveness of it for the sites that they are involved in managing. This research used a qualitative Delphi Panel method to evaluate stakeholder perceptions of the potential development of dark tourism to the Greenwich Maritime World Heritage Site in London, United Kingdom. The findings show that stakeholders are broadly supportive of tourism to the site and positive about future tourism growth. Despite this, they did not support the development of dark tourism to the site because it was perceived as inauthentic, tacky and sensationalist. In order to address this issue, recommendations are made that future attempts to develop dark tourism at WHS should involve enhancing the knowledge of stakeholders about dark tourism, and of the resources within their sites that could be included in a dark tourism offer to tourists.

A Hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Technique to Evaluate Regional Intellectual Capital: Evidence from China

“…This helps to avoid conflicts among experts. As a tool for decision-making by expert groups, the Delphi method has been successfully applied in various fields, such as regional development [65,66], tourism [67,68], and medical health [69,70]. In this paper, the quartile deviation (QD) is defined as one-half the interquartile range (IQR), which is the difference between the 25th and the 75th percentiles in the frequency distribution, applied to determine consistency [71].…”

Tourism sustainability model for a world heritage destination: the case of residents’ perception of Ohrid

“…It is nevertheless true that additional requirements must be completed to build a tourism destination using the WH brand (Kennell and Powell, 2021). Effective governance and management of diverse sets of stakeholders is a prerequisite for the development of sustainable tourism (Liburd and Becken, 2017;, Mihalič, 2020.…”

Ebreju mantojuma un holokausta vietas tūrisma attīstības kontekstā: attīstība un izaicinājumi iesaistīto pušu skatījumā

“…Tumšā tūrisma pētnieki (Light, 2017;Kennell, Powell, 2021) uzskata, ka tumšais un nāves tūrisms maz atšķiras no mantojuma tūrisma un ka tas ir vēsturiskā mantojuma tūrisma paveids. Džeremijs Velss (Jeremy C. Wells) un Lukass Liksinskis (Lucas Lixinski) (2016), uzsverot vēsturiskās vides, tās izpratnes un saglabāšanas motīvu dinamiskumu, norāda, ka kultūrvēsturiskā mantojuma saglabāšanas kontekstā vairāk piemērota ir nevis tradicionālā ortodoksālā pieeja, kas fokusējas uz mantojuma objektiem, bet gan heterodoksālā teorija, kuras centrā ir cilvēki un tas, kādas ir viņu attiecības ar mantojumu.…”

“…Stone (2006) tumšā tūrisma spektrs). Jo iesaistīto pušu pārstāvji zina vairāk par tumšo tūrismu, jo labāk viņi spēj novērtēt un pamatoti diskutēt par tumšā tūrisma potenciālu (Kennell, Powell, 2021).…”

“…Kultūrvēsturiskā mantojuma tūrisms, uzsverot tūrisma izglītojošo lomu un ietekmi uz atmiņu un piemiņas kultūru, tiek uzskatīts par atbilstošāko veidu ebreju mantojuma un holokausta iesaistē tūrismā. Šīs atziņas sakrīt ar Apvienotajā Karalistē veiktā pētījuma rezultātiem (Kennell, Powell, 2021).…”