Have you ever been to the battlefields at Waterloo? Or would you like to visit the place where the Twin Towers . first were standing? Then you are a so-called dark tourist. This form of tourism is very popular. But why do people visit places full of atrocities?
Going on vacation to concentration camps and cemeteries probably doesn't appeal to everyone. Yet more and more people visit these kinds of places. According to Philip Stone, the director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research, dark tourism includes any visit to a place associated with death, disaster or other atrocities. "It's the commercialization of the morbid," he said in an interview with the English newspaper The Guardian. “Often it starts with tours of locals and ends with an official memorial to the tragic event in question for tourists to visit.”
The Netherlands also has popular, dark attractions. In 2015, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, for example, broke the visitor record with 1.2 million visitors for the sixth year in a row. Debbie Listle, International Relations Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast , thinks the intensification of globalization and media coverage is playing a role in the increased interest in “dark places.” Thanks to the news and the internet, for example, we are increasingly aware of and more involved with what is going on elsewhere.
In addition, we have started to travel more and more easily. “And what you then see is that tourism is fragmenting into all kinds of smaller niches, such as dark tourism,” says Ben de Pater, associate professor of human geography at the University of Utrecht.
Horrible History
Why do people even tend to visit places where the most horrible things happened? According to tourism marketing expert Tony Seaton of the University of Bedfordshire, on such trips we are driven by a desire to look death in the eye. This can be done in a direct way, for example by looking at skulls, or symbolically, by visiting memorials. This mainly, but not exclusively, concerns a violent death, he says.
In addition, according to Peter Tarlow, rabbi and professor of tourism at the University of Texas, people are often amazed and fascinated by horrific things from the past about which they have heard a lot. They want to see the scene with their own eyes and learn more about it. Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp is an example and, since 2001, Ground Zero in New York City. Because visitors often come to commemorate the victims and indicate that they are touched by their suffering, this is also called mourning tourism. The vast majority of such tourists usually behave with interest and respect.
Disaster tourist
But there are also other types of tourists:the thrill seekers. They visit places where a tragedy took place mainly for pleasure, as entertainment without feeling much connection with the victims. Such disaster tourists, for example, like to take a selfie in front of a collapsed building. They prefer to arrive as soon as possible after a spot has been found to 'really be there'.
In Pescara del Tronto they can talk about it. The day after this Italian village was hit by a violent earthquake this year, it became a tourist attraction. Police and other aid workers had their hands full turning away visitors who took pictures of broken buildings and blocked the roads. Governments therefore usually have little interest in this version of dark tourism, which, incidentally, often disappears just as quickly as it arises.
It is clear that disaster tourists can sometimes be a real uh… disaster. But what are the consequences of tourism to dark hotspots, that are tolerated or even supported by (local) governments?
Attention
As with regular tourism, a positive feature of tourism flows to dark places is that it makes money. This can be very important, especially in an area where a disaster has occurred. Take New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina largely destroyed the city in 2005, Katrina Tours , guided tours that allowed visitors to see the damage for themselves, money in the drawer. They still exist today.
In addition, an influx of interested parties can ensure that a certain tragic event is not forgotten. Due to the many visits by tourists, the victims and their suffering remain on the map. Sometimes dark tourism literally keeps a place afloat, because the managers use the revenues to pay for renovations of tombstones or other remains. Moreover, if a dark place of historical or cultural value is heavily visited, it can be granted World Heritage status by the United Nations sooner, which in turn entails financial benefits.
Too busy
On the other hand, those same tourists can also cause damage, especially if there are a lot of them. Now that applies to most popular destinations. Dark attractions, however, are at an additional disadvantage, as they were often unplanned. Usually they arise suddenly, like the tunnel where Princess Diana died. The darkest places in particular (see box) are never designed for mass tourism and are damaged as a result.
To distinguish dark attractions that entertain from places that commemorate, dark tourism expert Philip Stone created a ranking. It runs from gray to black. The lightest spots represent dark attractions that mainly provide entertainment, such as dungeons:tourist spots in the dark corridors below a city where authors tell about witch burnings and other atrocities from the past to make participants laugh and shudder.
Museums and educational centers that deal with death and suffering are dark gray. Cemeteries are a little darker again. Pitch black are places where masses of people were killed, such as battlefields and concentration camps.
Auschwitz-Birkenau also has this problem. Last year 1.2 million tourists visited the former concentration camp in Poland, the highest number ever. “That huge influx, and the sometimes literal pressure that comes with it, makes the barracks and other buildings more likely to sag or otherwise deteriorate,” Jolanta Banas, director of the conservation division, told the Smithsonian.com, a U.S. popular researcher. scientific website. In addition, sponsors often don't queue to support dark destinations, especially the very dark ones (see box). "They prefer not to commit themselves to a 'museum of hate'," Auschwitz spokesman Jarek Mensfelt told NRC Handelsblad.
Must be able?
Besides the fact that large numbers of tourists can damage a place where many victims fell, dark tourism raises even more questions. Can you earn money from victims and entertain visitors with their suffering? And what if the party that profits financially was responsible for their misery?
The border is vague, according to cultural geographer Bouke van Gorp of Utrecht University. "Because which battlefield are you allowed to visit? Or which heritage are you still allowed to visit? You can also think of a VOC building in Indonesia:beautiful facade, but behind it was an entire system that oppressed the local population."
This critical attitude is also recommended, given the process by which dark places are officially opened to tourists over time. “In the early years, such as at Auschwitz-Birkenau, there was a lot of plea for destruction. After a few years, some people go there. Initially to commemorate and later on, curiosity is added.” The distance is now so great that more people want to visit it and it is therefore being designed for that purpose, for example on the basis of museums. The consequence of the historical distance is that stories are forgotten over time. The dark attractions also have to select experiences, so that not everything can be shown. “As a result, the past is represented and interpreted differently.”
Also Nathan Austin, a specialist in Business Administration at the University of Baltimore, believes dark tourism isn't necessarily right or wrong — a lot depends on how the place is marketed. For example, if they take local feelings into account and speak with respect about the victims, tourism to such places can contribute to awareness. But he is critical of places where the owners exaggerate the gruesome for entertainment.
If the locals are still very much struggling with the tragic event in question, dark tourism can at least be extra sensitive. Certainly if the vast majority of the citizens involved do not benefit from it. For example, in 2012, bus tours in the Lower Ninth Ward, the most affected neighborhood in New Orleans, shut down. Residents were tired of being stared at like monkeys, while bus traffic slowed renovation work. Local residents barely earned from the tourists. Some also found it annoying that they were constantly confronted with the disaster because of the tours. "You can never put it behind you like this," tour leader Tom Nagelin told the American newspaper The New York Times., for example. He himself therefore exclusively organizes cultural and culinary tours.
What do you think? Is dark tourism allowed?