Tour guides as mediators of commemoration, education and holiday making

Abstract

Although tour guides are an integral part of the social phenomenon that is dark tourism, the part played by them has been to date relatively unexplored. Unique in the scenery of the various tourism categories, dark tourism involves commemoration, education and mourning, adjacent to more typical activities of holiday making. This chapter presents a study that set out to explore the mediatory role of tour guides in the dark tourism experience in Berlin. The city has some 30 museums and hundreds of memorials, commemorating the tragedies and atrocities associated with World War II, the Holocaust and the Cold War. The researcher, himself a tour guide, combined qualitative research methods of direct passive observation, dyadic interviews and auto-ethnography. The findings of this research indicate a controlled process in which the guides interpret dark events. Guides take into account the data available to them in choosing how to interpret sensitive topics to their audience. Interpretations are made with choices of words, anecdotes and different narratives – presented here as the three levels of interpretation. The study shows how guides navigate the power they have over the experience of the tourists in dark tourism sites. Furthermore, the study concludes that due to the sensitive nature of the events interpreted guides will often choose to interpret for the topic and not only for the tour. The study expands the knowledge of how the tourist experience in dark tourism sites is mediated, and the potential tour guides have in enhancing it in an either positive or negative ways.