Dark Tourism: Understanding the Concept and Recognizing the Values

Abstract

Dark tourism is a youngest subset of tourism, introduced only in 1990s. It is a multifaceted and diverse phenomenon. Dark tourism studies carried out in the Western countries succinctly portrays dark tourism as a study of history and heritage, tourism and tragedies. Dark tourism has been identified as niche or special interest tourism. This paper highlights how dark tourism has been theoretically conceptualized in previous studies. As an umbrella concept dark tourism includes than tourism, blackspot tourism, morbid tourism, disaster tourism, conflict tourism, dissonant heritage tourism and others. This paper examines how dark tourism as a distinct form of tourism came into existence in the tourism academia and how it could be understood as a separate subset of tourism in better way. Basically, this study focuses on deathscapes, repressed sadism, commercialization of grief, commoditization of death, dartainment, blackpackers, darsumers and deathseekers capitalism. This study generates curiosity among the readers and researchers to understand and explore the concepts and values of dark tourism in a better way.

Does a visitor of dark sites have a dark personality?

“…Khan et al (2021) researched the negative effects of psychopathic leadership on employees' career satisfaction and turnover intentions in tourism enterprises, while Machiavellianism was researched in respect to its effects on sales executives of a resort timeshare company, showing that salespeople with expressed Machiavellian orientation are likely to be more successful in their business performances (Crotts et al, 2005). As for sadism, there are several studies that connect sadism to the dark tourism context (Korstanje & Ivanov, 2012;Korstanje, 2020;Kunwar & Karki, 2019). The question that these studies raise and that remains to be answered is whether dark tourism is a new form of repressed sadism i.e.…”

Dark Tourism: A Preliminary Study of Barpak and Langtang as Seismic Memorial Sites of Nepal

“…Th erefore, the researchers of this study suggest for not taking it as negative deviance as many countries have already developed the concept of dark tourism and benefi ted from it. Th is study shows that Nepal has a lot of scopes of dark tourism (Kunwar & Karki, 2019). Besides Barpak and Langtang, there are various dark tourism themed sites of Nepal which could be developed as dark tourism sites in Nepal such as: Mortality gaze: Pashupatinath (Kathmandu); Memory and Remembrance: Rani Mahal (Palpa), Rani Pokhari (Kathmandu); Battlefi eld: Jomsom (Mustang); Tourism and Tragedies: Mt.…”

Dark Tourism in Colombia: Motivation of Travellers and Community Practices

“…Dark tourism takes place in places where a certain degree of danger can be perceived, such as those that have experienced natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions (Tang, 2018). Other authors have highlighted cemeteries or certain cities where celebrities have died of sudden deaths as preferred settings for dark tourism (Kunwar and Karki, 2019). In this context, we can highlight sites such as Chornobyl, where the worst radioactive accident in history occurred, leaving numerous deaths in its wake, and which even today still harbours a certain degree of radioactivity in its atmosphere (Stone, 2018).…”