Dark Tourism - understanding visitor motivations Thesis Proposal

Dark Tourism - understanding visitor motivations - Thesis Proposal Example (Beech 2000, p. 32). Such places symbolize the harsh realities of human history. Darkness, cruelty, crime and blood is reflected in the very nature of such sites. However, despite all these elements, such sites also make very good visiting places for tourists and are of great significance not only to the ministry of tourism, but also to the whole society in general and the government in particular. Dark tourism sites are very important for the economic strength of a country given the large number of tourists they attract. The places exhibiting dark tourism are not limited only to actual places where some accident took place in the past but there is also a range of places that are considered to be in the domain of dark tourism sites that are in some way related to horrific events. These may be museums or other places of cultural and historic significance displaying elements memorizing bad moments in the past. There may be times when a cinema projecting movies based on accidents of the past like Titanic might also be quite related to the subject matter. Given the widespread popularity of dark tourism among the people all over the world, dark tourism sites have huge potential of adding a lot to a country’s GDP provided that government strategically plans to increase the opportunities for tourists interested in dark tourism. This requires careful analysis of all the factors that influence and are influenced by the dark tourism that include but are not limited to age of people, imminence and severity of the incident and its cultural and national significance Before getting into an in-depth analysis of the purpose and the study design to be adopted for this research, it is customary to define the dark tourism. Dark tourism was initially referred to by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley as â€Å"†¦the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified