Pros and Cons of Dark Tourism

Dark tourism also known as ‘Thanatourism’ especially in the academic arena, is the tourism activities mainly in the heritage or historical sites with controversies and other attractions and exhibitions of death, disaster, memorial sites or the seemingly macabre that were shadowed in the past. It is a concept, started in mid 1990s/2000s, actually transforming war or disaster zones into tourism or travel destinations. Such sites and attractions are gaining popularity and attentions of number of visitors, more than half a million per year in recent decades. For example: Auschwitz museum in Oswiecim, Poland; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. Japan; Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Peace park Jeju Island, S. Korea etc.  

In the history of human civilizations and developments, many natural or manmade devastations and disasters occurred, in which millions of people sacrificed their lives, many peoples lost their loved ones. These zones of wars and disasters/devastations, memorial sites, controversial heritages sites are being promoted in differently, but nowadays known as Dark Tourism. In the process of regional development, the concept of dark tourism has many benefits, as well as some problems that are presented hereunder in the table.  

Table: Merits and problems of Dark Tourism in Regional Development

Qualities of Dark Tourism

Problems of Dark Tourism

-         Drawing attention of large mass of tourists as zones of war/disasters as into tourism destinations -         Attracting global communication media and academicians, researchers   -         The research has shown that tourists mainly elderly, locals, persons connected to the incidents, or having higher levels of education. -         New research areas for those interested in related fields -         Possibility to combine it with other tourism activities such as education tourism, tourism, pilgrimages etc. -         Through dark tourism, the war/disaster zones can be revived and recovered -         It can generate interest of the tourists and public especially youths, on the destination - memorial sites and disaster/war zone if executed respectfully will generate revenue/benefits to victims and local people and also provide awareness and education of the incidents and disasters. -         Tourism is always exploring new products, it can be in the form of volunteerism as well.

-         Change or affect the image of some of the destinations, which previously promoted as different type of tourisms (Eg. Education tourism) -         Knowledge and experiences of visitors and tourists on dark tourism and sites are both theoretically fragile and limited -         Visitors/tourists understood it different form of tourism either education   in museum or recreation in park or garden or others -         Whereas, young, non-locals, tourists with lower levels of educations are not interested in it. -         Whereas very few, limited research since it’s a new field -         Tourism product itself is not clear and services need to defined as it sometimes conflicts with others -         New and different form of tourism, need more time to generate common understanding -         There is very little chances of victims or local people getting benefits directly. In order to promote this sort of tourism huge investment or attention of government is needed.