Motivations in Battlefield Tourism: The Case of ‘1916 Easter Rising Rebellion’, Dublin

Abstract

Journeys to battlefields or war-related sites are categorised as dark tourism. Dark tourism is travelling to sites associated with death, disasters or atrocities and has emerged as a major tourist attraction. It involves visiting concentration camps, war memorials, cemeteries, scenes of mass murder, horror museums, fields of fatality, sites of natural disasters and perilous places, and has been varyingly described as ‘morbid tourism’, ‘milking the macabre’, Thana tourism ‘black spots tourism’ or ‘sensation sights tourism’ and ‘the heritage of atrocity tourism’. Battlefield tourism can be defined as travelling to war-related sites to remember and commemorate the fallen focusing on spiritual and emotional experience. The battlefields and other artefacts associated with warfare have been drawing visitors for many centuries. A trip to war-related sites could take many different forms, and visitor backgrounds, attitudes and their reasons for visiting war-related sites could also vary. This paper reports findings of a study examining motivations of visitors to major battlefield destinations related to the ‘1916 Easter Rising Rebellion’. This study employed quantitative research methods with a questionnaire survey at two different sites and a tour associated with Easter Rising rebellion in Dublin, Ireland.