Dark Tourism: Educational or Exploitative Side of Tourism?

Abstract

The concept of tourism is often a rosy experience for many, where one would even associate the term with amazing sight-seeing or some romantic experiences. In the recent past a different side of tourism has been gaining popularity. What is that? This side of tourism is based mainly on natural or man-made disasters. This chapter would be talking about Dark Tourism. People around the world are more inclined to know about tragedies, deaths, and brutal killing of people in masses. This inclination is making people visit such sites which further makes them understand, imagine (the reality of past), and know in depth about such sad occurrences.

This chapter would then give you a tour around more of similar type of tourisms namely disaster tourism, ghost tourism, and more. Tourists lately are proud of being known as “Dark Tourists” and they prefer to pay visit to places like the Auschwitz's Holocaust concentration camps, Catacombs, Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, Bhangarh, and many more. This section would highlight the questionable sides of this tourism.

In the last segment of this chapter, the conclusion, would be drawn toward identifying whether Dark tourism is educational, like the other sides of tourism, or it is an exploitative side of the tourism that is merely trying to make profits from the tragedies happened across the globe.

Citation

Gaur, I. (2024), "Dark Tourism: Educational or Exploitative Side of Tourism?", Sharma, A., Arora, S. and Shukla, P. (Ed.) Dark Tourism (Building the Future of Tourism), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 27-40. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83797-336-120241003