Dark tourism

Dark tourism (also Thana tourism, black tourism, morbid tourism or grief tourism) has been defined as tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy. More recently, it was suggested that the concept should also include reasons tourists visit that site, since the site's attributes alone may not make a visitor a "dark tourist". The main attraction to dark locations is their historical value rather than their associations with death and suffering. Holocaust tourism contains aspects of both dark tourism and heritage tourism.

Example destinations

Destinations of dark tourism include castles and battlefields such as Culloden in Scotland and Bran Castle and Poienari Castle in Romania; former prisons such as Beaumaris Prison in Anglesey, Wales and the Jack the Ripper exhibition in the London Dungeon; sites of natural disasters or man made disasters, such as Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan, Chernobyl in Ukraine and the commercial activity at Ground Zero in New York one year after September 11, 2001. It also includes sites of human atrocities and genocide, such as the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in China, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia; the sites of the Jeju Uprising in South Korea and the Spirit Lake Internment Camp Centre near La Ferme, Quebec as an example of Canada's internment operations of 1914–1920.

In Bali "death and funeral rites have become commodified for tourism ..., where enterprising businesses begin arranging tourist vans and sell tickets as soon as they hear someone is dying." In the US, visitors can tour the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. "with an identity card which matches their age and gender with that of a name and photo of a real holocaust victim. Against a backdrop of video interpretation portraying killing squads in action, the pseudo holocaust victim enters a personal ID into monitors as they wander around the attraction to discover how their real-life counterpart is faring. In Colombia, places associated with Pablo Escobar, the drug lord from the Medellín Cartel, became hotspots for dark tourism through Escobar-themed tours. In Medellín, visitors frequent Roberto Escobar's private museum of his infamous brother, the house where he was killed, and La Catedral, Escobar's prison. Another famous place is the Haciénda Nápoles estate located between Bogotá and Medellín, near Puerto Triunfo.

Disaster tourism

Disaster tourism has been defined as the practice of visiting locations at which an environmental disaster, either natural or man-made, has occurred. Although a variety of disasters are the subject of subsequent disaster tourism, the most common disaster tourist sites are the areas surrounding volcanic eruptions. Opinions on the morality and impact of disaster tourism are divided. Advocates of disaster tourism often claim that the practice raises awareness of the event, stimulates the local economy, and educates the public about the local culture, while critics claim that the practice is exploitative, profits on loss, and often mischaracterizes the events in question.

Examples of disaster tourism

79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius

When the nearby volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the eruption buried the city of Pompeii and the nearby city of Herculaneum and preserved everything from its streets to its frescoes under mounds of pumice and ash. Although Pompeii was initially rediscovered in 1599, tourism was undesirable until Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre performed a much larger excavation in 1748, which revealed many noteworthy structures, such as a fully intact Roman theatre.

Today, Pompeii belongs to the much larger Vesuvius National Park and is one of Italy’s most popular tourist sites, attracting approximately 2.5 million visitors annually.

Hindenburg incident (1937)

In the early evening of May 6, 1937, the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg burst into flame during a docking attempt at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, just outside Lakehurst, New Jersey. With the cause of the fire unknown and a death toll of thirty-seven passengers, the Hindenburg disaster became one of the biggest news stories of its time.

Today, a bronze plaque and cement outline the site of the incident. Immediately east of the crash site, volunteers of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society will conduct public tours of Historic Hangar One, the location where the Hindenburg was kept.

1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion

On the morning of April 26, 1986, the number four reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, producing airborne radioactive materials and a fire that burned for ten days. The Chernobyl explosion caused dozens of direct deaths and thousands of deaths due to long-term exposure. In the aftermath, 350,000 residents were displaced from Chernobyl and the nearby city of Pripyat. The other three reactors at Chernobyl power plant continued running at the time but were gradually lessened until the power plant’s shutdown in 2000.

The Ukraine-based tour company SoloEast Travel currently runs daylong tours through Chernobyl’s exclusion zone, a 2600 square-kilometer area that includes the plant. The highlights of the tour include visiting Red Forest, a pine tree woodland destroyed by radioactive contamination, exploring Kopachi, a nearby village that was demolished due to high contamination levels, and finally coming within 305 meters of the remains of the number four reactor. These tours are met with some controversy because despite that SoloEast Travel claims that publicly accessible areas surrounding the power plant contain low levels of radiation and are deemed safe, a number of third party scientists disagree.

1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck Alaska's Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound and leaked crude oil into the sound. An estimated 30 million plus gallons spilled. Oil from the spill would eventually contaminate more than 11,000 square-miles of ocean and 1300 miles of coastline. The spill killed hundreds of sea otters, harbor seals, and eagles and hundreds of thousands of seabird in the days following the spill. Despite that it is not the world's largest oil spill, the Exxon Valdez oil spill is typically considered the most notorious in American history.

Having been among the first responders, the family-run Stan Stephens Cruises operates glacier tours out of Prince William Sound that highlight the history surrounding the Exxon Valdez spill and its aftermath.

Hurricane Katrina (2005)

In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the American city of New Orleans. Although 80–90% of the population was evacuated prior, twenty-three breaches in navigational canal levees, drainage canal levees, and floodwalls occurred as a result of Katrina’s storm surge. With these failures, 80% of New Orleans became flooded, which in turn caused over 200,000 homes to be destroyed and 800,000 residents to be displaced. At the time, the disaster had a large impact on the politics, population, and economics for a sizable portion of the United States.

A decade after the incident, the effects of Hurricane Katrina are still visible and catastrophic. Although many companies offer bus tours of the still-damaged regions, critics argues that these tours interfere with the relief effort. Some have suggested that curious tourists should instead go on bike tours in order to restrict the disruption to residents trying to get their lives back on track. Quite frequently, tours will focus on showcasing the culture of specific districts and neighborhood, treating Hurricane Katrina as the most recent event in a much longer cultural history. Many tours donate their profits or a portion of their profits to local relief organizations.

2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull

Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland, began erupting on 20 March 2010. At this time, about 500 farmers and their families from the areas of Fljótshlíð, Eyjafjöll, and Landeyjar were evacuated overnight, but allowed to return to their farms and homes after Civil Protection Department risk assessment. On 14 April 2010, Eyjafjallajökull erupted for the second time, requiring 800 people to be evacuated.

In the wake of the first eruption, tour companies offered trips to see the volcano. However, the ash cloud from the second eruption disrupted air traffic over Great Britain and most of northern and western Europe, making it difficult to travel to Iceland even though Iceland's airspace itself remained open throughout.

2010 eruption of Mt Merapi

In the November of 2010, the active Indonesian volcano of Mt Merapi had its second eruption in a century, which led to direct deaths of 353 people and the displacement of approximately 400,000 people in nearby villages.

Mt Merapi is unique among disaster tourist sites because Merapi was a popular tourist site prior to the volcano’s eruption, and tourism had already made up a significant portion of the local economy. While many tour companies and travel agencies hold more standard sightseeing tours of the affected areas, some programs provide more direct paths to donating to local charities and getting involved in the relief effort. For example, the Go Green Campaign encourages tourists to purchase small trees or seeds and plant them in local villages.