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Purpose: The present chapter includes discussing the effects of COVID-19 in the tourism industry. Although much has been written on COVID-19 in these days, literature emphasizes on the economic devastating consequences of lockdown on tourism industry. The chapter goes in an opposite direction revealing the fears, expectance, and hopes of tourism staff in Argentina.

Design-Methodology: Because of the methodological impossibilities to conduct face-to-face interviews, we have employed digital platform to conduct 50 interviews in tourism professionals geographically located in different Argentinean cities as well as coming from different subsectors in the tourism industry. The used method was snowball which means that each interviewee recommended another one once the interview ends. The sample was drawn in 20 females and 30 males from 25 to 55 years old.

Findings: The findings suggest three important assumptions. Interviewees expressed some partisan or ideological hostilities against China and Eastern countries. The Chinese tourists were seen with some mistrust for interviewed people as well as the reaction of Chinese government to stop the pandemic. In other cases, old inter-class rivalries were found when interviewees blamed the stranded (rich) tourists as the main carriers of the virus in Argentina-wide. Hostilities and chauvinist expression against neighboring countries such Bolivia or Chile were overtly uttered. These narratives escalate when interviewees manifest their wages have been unilaterally slumped down. By the side, digital technologies offer as fertile ground to exploit new forms of tourism in the years to come.

Research Limitations: The obtained outcome should be validated in next approaches because the sample is not statistically representative of the universe. The restrictions imposed by the lockdown impeded further research today. In the same line, the sample was limited to tourism professionals, which suggests that policymakers should be included in the future research.

Practical Implications: Understanding the fears and hope of tourism staff is an alternative way to enact sustainable policies to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic in the tourism industry. While these policies construct a bridge between theory and management, no less true is that the future of tourism remains uncertain.

Originality Value: The present chapter provides an original empirical insight into the viewpoint of tourism staff, which is today subject to countless fears and deprivations. The extensive lockdown imposed by Argentinean government, accompanied by the impossibility to orchestrate a preparedness program of mitigation, has led the industry to a slow agony. The chapter reflects the rise of an anti-foreign discourse and sentiment oriented to demonize not only the Chinese (Asian) tourists but also expatriates living abroad. This anti-tourist discourse, which oppose to the neologism offered by Urry as the “tourist-gaze,” univocally exhibits the start of a radicalized hospitality we dubbed as “the wicked-gaze.” The “Other” is not an object of curiosity any longer, but “a potential enemy” to be controlled.

The present chapter reviews part of the literature that focuses on dark tourism and dark consumption. The main theories were placed under the critical lens of scrutiny. With strongholds and weaknesses, dark tourism seems to be enframed in an ‘economic-based paradigm’, which prioritises the managerial perspective over other methods. Like Dark Tourist, the Netflix documentary assessed in this chapter, this academic perspective accepts that the tourist's experience is the only valid source of information to understand the phenomenon. Rather, we hold the thesis that far from being a local trend, dark tourism evinces a morbid drive which not only emerges recently but involves other facets and spheres of society. We coin the term Thana-capitalism to denote a passage from risk society to a new stage, where the Other's death is situated as the main commodity to exchange. The risk society as it was imagined by Beck, set finally the pace to thana-capitalism. Dark Tourist proffers an interesting platform to gain further understanding of this slippery matter. In sharp contrast to Seaton, Sharpley or Stone, we argue that dark tourists are unable to create empathy with the victims. Instead, they visit these types of marginal destinations in order to re-elaborate a political attachment with their institutions. They consume the Other's pain not only to feel unique and special (a word that sounds all the time in the documentary) but also to affirm their privileged role as part of the selected peoples.

The present chapter reviews part of the literature that focuses on dark tourism and dark consumption. The main theories were placed under the critical lens of scrutiny. With strongholds and weaknesses, dark tourism seems to be enframed in an ‘economic-based paradigm’, which prioritises the managerial perspective over other methods. Like Dark Tourist, the Netflix documentary assessed in this chapter, this academic perspective accepts that the tourist's experience is the only valid source of information to understand the phenomenon. Rather, we hold the thesis that far from being a local trend, dark tourism evinces a morbid drive which not only emerges recently but involves other facets and spheres of society. We coin the term Thana-capitalism to denote a passage from risk society to a new stage, where the Other's death is situated as the main commodity to exchange. The risk society as it was imagined by Beck, set finally the pace to thana-capitalism. Dark Tourist proffers an interesting platform to gain further understanding of this slippery matter. In sharp contrast to Seaton, Sharpley or Stone, we argue that dark tourists are unable to create empathy with the victims. Instead, they visit these types of marginal destinations in order to re-elaborate a political attachment with their institutions. They consume the Other's pain not only to feel unique and special (a word that sounds all the time in the documentary) but also to affirm their privileged role as part of the selected peoples.

The present book chapter deals with the problem of dark tourism as well as the resilience forms of consumption in post-disaster context.

The turn of the century characterised a radical change in the forms of tourism consumption. New forms of tourism as dark or thana tourism have captivated the attention of scholars and journalists. This book chapter centres efforts in dillucidating what are the key factors that determine the formation of a dark site. The text is inspired in my own ethnographies in Cromañon, Argentina and the Ground Zero, US.

As Phillip Stone puts it, not all dark shrines or sites welcome tourists. While some sites are reluctant to mass tourism, others are mainly organised around the figure of the tourist. La Republica de Cromañón is a night club where in a fire died 194 young. The site is today refurbished as a sanctuary to remind the victims. At a closer look, there is a tension between stakeholders at the time of promoting dark tourism in Cromañón. In the opposite the ground zero is fully designed to be visited by thousands tourists.

The originality of this research consists in the contraposition of two study cases which answer the question to what extent dark tourism is desired by locals. The findings lay the foundations towards the specialised literature in dark tourism studies. We discuss critically the nature of thanatopsis.

This paper aims to revolve around two problems which, though imagined as different, can be addressed altogether. On one hand, the advance of terrorism as a major threat to the tourism industry, while – on the other – we discuss the ontological nature of tourism as a rite of passage, which is vital to keep the political legitimacy of officialdom. At the time, paradoxically, social scientists shrug off tourism as a naïve commercial activity, while the main tourist destinations are being attacked by jihadism. This suggests the disinterest of ones associates to the interests of others.

The author holds the thesis that tourism derives from ancient institutions, which illuminated in the growth of Occident and the formation of hospitality. Capitalism hides the importance of tourism as a mere trivialization as a bit-player. However, a closer look reminds precisely the opposite. The recent attacks perpetrated at main destinations reveal tourism as an exemplary (symbolic) center of the West, a source of authority and power for the existing hierarchal order.

The issue captivates the attention of scholars, officials and policymakers, and at the same time, epistemologists of tourism receive a fresh novel debate regarding the origins of tourism.

It is a great paradox that tourism would be selected as a target for jihadism but at the same time a naïve activity for social scientists or at the least by the French tradition. Despite the partisan criticism exerted on tourism as an alienatory force, this work showed two important aspects, which merits to be discussed. At a closer look, tourism should be understood as “a rite of passage” whose function associates to the revitalization of those glitches happened during the cycles of production. Second, and most important, tourism accommodates those frustrations to prevent acts of separatism or the rise of extreme conflict among classes.