Mankind has been fascinated with and drawn to the macabre for many years. This is particularly evident in the growing popularity of dark tourism, which centers on locations known for death and suffering. Virtual Traumascapes and Exploring the Roots of Dark Tourism is a pivotal reference source featuring the latest scholarly research in which the rise of new technology platforms is not only changing tourism worldwide, but also facilitating the access to areas of war, mourning, and disaster. Including coverage on a number of topics such as sexual tourism, disaster recovery, and capitalism, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on concepts and methodologies of the dark tourism industry.

Throughout the world, local, natural wonders are being overrun by hordes of destination seekers intent on capturing nature’s majesty. Though the flood of tourists brings economic stability to these regions, the environmental and local community concerns must be taken into consideration. Ecotourism and Community Intervention: Emerging Research and Opportunities examines community intervention strategies and their causal relationship with destination sustainability and destination quality. The book calls for more proactive measures to enhance destination sustainability through ecotourism initiatives in destinations across the globe. The content within this publication examines global business, mass tourism, and resource management. It is designed for conservationists, environmentalists, tour developers, travel agents, policymakers, administrators, managers, and university students.

The transition from mass tourism to niche tourism has been a slow process. It is clear that mass tourism can damage local culture, authenticity, and resources, and niche tourism is considerably important for the future of tourism companies and destination managers. Thus, it is essential for tourism companies and destination managers to be proactive and adapt to market changes and challenges to hold a stronger position in the business environment in the future. Exploring Niche Tourism Business Models, Marketing, and Consumer Experience provides relevant theoretical and empirical research findings, an innovative and multifaceted perspective of the niche tourist experience, and an understanding of how companies adopt business models based on sustainable paradigms and innovative technologies as a way to create value. Covering topics such as business models, rural tourism, and visitor experience, this premier reference source is an essential resource for marketing managers, product developers, niche tourism executives, marketing and tourism students, business professionals, researchers, and academicians.

International tourism has been a target for terrorist agents seeking to cause political instability and economic disruption in the West. This book lays the foundations of a new understanding of tourism security by discussing the nature of tourism, tourists, and terrorists.

In recent years there has been a growth in both the practice and research of dark tourism; the phenomenon of visiting sites of tragedy or disaster. Expanding on this trend, this book examines dark tourism through the new lens of pilgrimage. It focuses on dark tourism sites as pilgrimage destinations, dark tourists as pilgrims, and pilgrimage as a form of dark tourism. Taking a broad definition of pilgrimage so as to consider aspects of both religious and non-religious travel that might be considered pilgrimage-like, it covers theories and histories of dark tourism and pilgrimage, pilgrimage to dark tourism sites, and experience design. A key resource for researchers and students of heritage, tourism and pilgrimage, this book will also be of great interest to those studying anthropology, religious studies and related social science subjects.

This book provides original, innovative, and international tourism research that is embedded in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological thought in the study of dark tourism. It is almost 25 years since the idea of dark tourism was introduced and presented into the field of tourism studies. The impact of this idea was greater, which attracted a great deal of attention from different researchers and practitioners with a good range of disciplines and farther tourism studies. This edited volume aims to capture a glimpse of the types of cutting-edge thinking and academic research in the domain of dark tourism studies as well as encourage and advance theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research on dark tourism. The book also addresses several future research directions focusing on the experience and emotions of visitors at ‘dark tourism’ sites. This book will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in dark tourism. Other interested stakeholders including those in the tourism industry, government bodies and community groups will also find this volume relevant. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Heritage Tourism.

Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) uses an ethnographic lens to explore the dissonances associated with the commodification of Chornobyl’s heritage. The book considers the role of the guides as experience brokers, focusing on the synergy between tourists and guides in the performance of heritage interpretation. Banaszkiewicz proposes to perceive tour guides as important actors in the bottom-up construction of heritage discourse contributing to more inclusive and participatory approach to heritage management. Demonstrating that the CEZ has been going through a dynamic transformation into a mass tourism attraction, the book offers a critical reflection on heritagisation as a meaning-making process in which the resources of the past are interpreted, negotiated, and recognised as a valuable legacy. Applying the concepts of dissonant heritage to describe the heterogeneous character of the CEZ, the book broadens the interpretative scope of dark tourism which takes on a new dimension in the context of the war in Ukraine. Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone argues that post-disaster sites such as Chornobyl can teach us a great deal about the importance of preserving cultural and natural heritage for future generations. The book will be of interest to academics and students who are engaged in the study of heritage, tourism, memory, disasters and Eastern Europe.