Understanding Dark Tourism: Motivations, Impact, And Future Challenges

Significance of Dark Tourism

INTRODUCTION

SIGNIFICANCE OF DARK TOURSIM

STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVED

TARGET AUDIENCE AND THEIR MOTIVATION

TYPES OF PRODUCT

POTENTIAL IMPACTS

FUTURE CHALLENGES

RECOMMENDATION

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Dark Tourism is a special kind of tourism activity that is based on their motivation and interest of the tourists to visit places that are related with death. In tourism there are various destinations to visit. Dark Tourism is a niche product of tourism that is connected with the places where historical death has occurred (Tarlow, 2005). According to Sharpely and Stone (2009), the dark tourism is becoming one of the most popular attentions of the tourists. This report will emphasize in understanding the motivation of the tourists behind dark tourism.

Dark Tourism is also known as Thana tourism. Dark Tourism is a cultural representation of specific passing has been alluded to as a contemporary interceding foundation between the living and the dead (Walter, 2009), whilst Stone (2011a, p. 25) proposes, ”Dark tourism gives a chance to mull over death of the Self through looking upon the Significant Other Dead”. Stone (2011b) likewise contends that Dark tourism encounters, at any rate for some individuals for generally at a few destinations, is less about expending stories of death, in any case, rather, of considering life and living notwithstanding unavoidable mortality. Dark tourism is unequivocally identified with society and legacy tourism and history plays a vital part in it. Thus dark tourism would help the people to understand the culture of their nation more effectively.

The stakeholders involved in Dark Tourism are:

• Government- The government can develop their by learning from the history and avoid the occurrence of turmoil.
• Tourists- Tourists get the opportunity to learn the issues that the world has faced, can build up strong bonding with the place and also articulate their thoughts about the interests.
• Private Sector like Tour Operator, Guide- They brings in profit for the nation. For instance, Ground Zero is become the top attraction of the city which brings in 1.8million visitors every year.
• Local Community – The local community benefits due to increase in the job opportunities which helps to develop the economy. The money collected from the tourism is reinvested for the development of the community which brings in profit and stabilizes and diversify the economy.

There are two types of tourists who love to visit dark sites. Niche market with specific interests in investigating the clash were youngsters as single person explorers, youngsters as a piece of a college bunch with an instructive enthusiasm toward peace studies or solidarity groups, clash determination or some other socio-political methodology who share collective  VFR(visiting friends and relatives) and political ideology. Another segment is the generic segment like leisure travelers who love to visit the dark sites for short break or partly VFR (Causevic and Lynch, n.d.).

Despite the fact that a generally settled upon conceptualization of traveler inspiration build is still failing to offer, the pull-push model has turned into a standout amongst the most well known ideas of vacationer inspiration and has been utilized by numerous researches. According to pull strategy the traveling decisions are made due to the extrinsic factors or external destination motivators where as the internal factors influence the psychology of the visitors and push them to make traveling decisions. Dann (1981) says that push factors include need for novelty, escape and self-esteem from traveling and pull factors include the attractions of the destinations, friendliness experience etc. Crompton (2004) argues that push factors include escape, self- evaluation and exploration, prestige, relaxation, regression, facilitation, enhancement linked to tourists and pull factors include education, novelty etc.

As indicated by Tarlow (2005) there are four essential feelings which connect on a Dark visitor’s mental state: instability, appreciation, quietude and predominance. Going by a Dark fascination can raise numerous emotions and Dark tourism can be seen in different ways. Sentiments of sentimentalism can be stirred from going to a war zone, where the guest can envision battling for a particular reason. Locales of brutality make a guest feel empathy for the victimized people and better than the culprits by showing how savage people can be.

Stakeholders Involved

Moutinho (2000) on the other hand indicates that there is another era of travelers rising. Rather than a vacationer the voyager has turned into a searcher. Inspirations incorporate finding oneself, ability to know distinctive societies and to get to know a zone’s or nation’s “mental air”, fauna and verdure. The searcher has the need to investigate, including energizing and even dangerous activity, to encourage the need identified with information and interest.

The other products of Dark Tourism are (Kendle, 2008):

• Disaster Tourism- An attack on visitors due to some natural disaster like tsunami, Hud Hud cyclone where they face lot of issues due to natural calamity. It is a subset of Grief Tourism.
• Grief Tourism- It is all about visiting the place where some tragic event has occurred. The place may include battle sites, concentration camps, seeing cemeteries etc. Example Drass and Kagil area in Indo Pak War or visiting Ground Zero after 9/11 attack in New York.
• Doomsday Tourism- This refers to visiting the places that are under threat due to global warming or some environmental issues. This can be visiting Arctic Glaciers.
• Poverty Tourism- It is all about visiting the poverty incapacitated towns or the slum areas. This gives an interest towards the human trait and makes the visitor understand about the other part of life. Visiting poor area of India or squatter camp in South Africa and Soweto.
• Suicide Tourism- This tourism has two forms; one is it includes different laws associated to euthanasia of various nations like in European countries like Switzerland, Netherland and Belgium, lively euthanasia is legal thus many ill people visit those place to die legally. Another form is people travel to the places to jump and commit suicide.

At first, dark tourism makes another experience for sightseers who look for unexpected exploit that are not quite the same as their commonplace lives. Other tourism, for example, volunteerism and ecotourism are the normal sorts of tourism. At times it makes a Dark get-away idea for individuals who are more liberal and who would need to investigate the world. It is likewise individual temperament to need to observer the anguish of others, which structures from the interest of the brain. Dark tourism is an intriguing tourism where going by the death camps, fight destinations and cemeteries can give the direct knowledge of hardship through our special eyes. Dark tourism is a multi-Darkensional encounter that can have a profound effect in life (Daams, 2007).

Likewise, Dark tourism additionally serves to create salary for the group, which is influenced by the disaster to remake itself. Sightseers who visit these catastrophe areas are really serving to accumulate voyagers dollars, which can help local people. Without the visitor’s dollars coming in, it is harder for local people to return to their lives before the catastrophe struck. Case in point in New Orleans, after the Hurricane Katrina, the city’s tourism figures dropped to 35 percent of what they were in 2004. A surge in tourism is crucial for the city to effectively reconstruct (Daams, 2007). An alternate spot of fiasco would be the Ground Zero in New York. There are visits, which permit gatherings to stroll on the floor of the previous World Trade Center at the grown-up cost of $25 and kids’ cost of $15. While the vast majority of the guests come to pay their appreciation, some might simply want to view the advancement on development (Reed, n.d).

Some individuals may believe that Dark tourism really gives a contrary effect on the destitute prosperity instead of enhancing their lives. Benefits from the voyagers were utilized for something else as opposed to helping these destitute to enhance their expectation for everyday life. As expressed by Swart, (2008), ‘Faultfinders slate dallying with the urban underbelly as exploitative, voyeuristic and an attack of protection. At the same time slum visits are likewise lauded for bringing issues to light of destitution and bringing tourism dollars to groups in need.

Though people visit dark sites due to their interest and curiosity, there exist few challenges which can have negative impact on the industry in future.

• Operational challenge: Tour operators of Dark Tourism may be to scaffold the existential crevice between the without a moment’s hesitation of the traveler and the occasion of more than a large portion of a century former and to change over the dedication thing into a live memory. Mover over such visit administrators need to give not just the instructive perspectives by the encounter with death yet moreover mastermind the visit as carefully and delicately as would be prudent as some of dark sightseers need to recollect a specific dead individual, perhaps their relative or dead social order, which is regularly the case in cemetery tourism and combat zone visits. Miles proposes that reviewing or animating the recorded occasions and the related instruction is not the discriminating achievement considers certain level of compassion encased in the middle of exploited people and guests for administrators to be productive. The dark tourism aggressive environment is molded by domains, for example, digital tourism, recorded tourism, medieval and reality while these get to be progressively obscured and hard to recognize with the area of Dark tourism(Papathanassis, 2011).

• Ethical Challenge: Tour operators are responsible for educating and entertaining the visitors about the darks sites but sometimes they charge money for this. Thus charging money for describing macabre and horrible stories is wrong. Sometimes the random stories are made instead of giving the proper facts this gives the visitors wrong information about the site (Garcia, 2012).

The recommendations are as follows:

• Government should focus on returning the benefits to the local by supporting educational programs and welfare programs
• Should endeavor to find effective balance among the private sectors and local community and also involve the local people in planning process to avoid conflicts.
• The local community people must take part in destination planning during the period of tourism consultation.
• The tour operators must strictly monitor and regulate the laws and ethics to avoid money business and also should respect and preserve the intrinsic quality and authenticity of the sites.

In conclusion, the report identified that the dark tourism industry, though it is a niche product of tourism, still, it has some positive impacts on the country like business opportunities, educational value, development of the local community and further improving the economy of the country. The report also identified that there are five different dark tourism products. Since the main focus of the report was to understand the motivation behind the dark tourism site visits, it is found from the past literatures that there exists push and pull factors that influence the traveling decision.

Causevic, S. and Lynch, P. (n.d.). The significance of dark tourism in the process of tourism development after a long- term politica. 

Crompton, J. (2004). Motivations for pleasure vacation. Teoksessa Williams, Stephen (toim.), Tourism. Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences, 2, pp.84–101.

Daams, E. (2007). Dark Tourism: Bearing Witness or Crass Spectacle?. 

Dann, G. (1981). Tourist Motivation: An appraisal. Annals of tourism research, 8(2), pp.187-219.

Garcia, B. (2012). Management issues in dark tourism attractions: The case of ghost tours in Edinburgh and Toledo. Journal of Unconventional Parks, Tourism & Recreation Research (JUPTRR), 4(1).

Kendle, A. (2008). Dark Tourism: A Fine Line Between Curiousity and Exploitation – Vagabondish.

Moutinho, L. (2000). Strategic management in tourism. Wallingford, Oxon, UK: CABI Pub.

Papathanassis, A. (2011). The long tail of tourism. Wiesbaden: Gabler Verlag, pp.11-13.

Reed, C. (n.d.). Shedding Light on Dark Tourism – GoNOMAD Travel.

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Swart, G. (2008). For richer, for poorer. [online] Brisbanetimes.com.au. 

Tarlow, P. 2005. Dark Tourism. Novelli, M. (edited) Niche tourism: Contemporary issues, trends and cases. Oxford: Elsevier Buterworth-Heinemann

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