Dark Heritage Sites Research Articles

Heritage site management: from dark tourism to transformative service experience?

This paper investigates the managerial perspectives of dark heritage sites and considers how visitors can benefit from and ideally be transformed by the overall experience. Initially the paper provides a review of dark tourism literature and considers the relevance of the servicescape concept for this context. An in-depth case-based method was used to investigate site managers’ perspectives and key issues related to visitor's experience and engagement. Heritage sites no longer want to be seen as dark places and are striving to become sites of sensitive heritage where the focus is on visitor and social engagement. The contribution of this study to services theory is in its illumination of the integrative role of socially symbolic dimensions for heritage sites. The role of the servicescape is central to the co-creation of individual, personal socially symbolic experiences and to the longer-term societal mission of social change and global citizenships.

Battlefield sites as dark tourism attractions: an analysis of experience

There has been much discussion by scholars about the efficacy of the term ‘dark tourism’ with a call to move from a theoretical to a more evidence-based approach to research. Recent analyses of dark heritage sites have shown that research has yet to engage fully with the experiences of tourists at dark sites. This paper seeks to meet this challenge by providing more evidence of the actual experiences of tourists at those sites which are conceptually identified as ‘dark’ using the particular example of battlefields in the UK. Based on a wide-ranging survey of battlefield sites the study used a blend of quantitative and qualitative methods to determine the nature of tourist experience. Central to this was a content analysis of visitor comments and vocabulary used to describe the sites. The results showed that visitors had a wide range of experiences but there was no evidence of a considered appreciation of the sites’ ‘darker’ aspects. Visitor experience here is casual and dominated by a lighter set of values. This is affected by the commercial nature of the sites which supports the assertion that thanatopsis is a rare feature of tourist visits.

Dark tourism revisited: a supply/demand conceptualisation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance the conceptualisation of dark tourism by evaluating both the supply‐side drivers for dark tourism development and the demand‐side motivations for visiting two dark heritage sites in Cyprus.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory research approach was adopted whereby 12 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with supply‐side stakeholders and two focus groups were conducted with local and foreign visitors.FindingsProduction and consumption of dark tourism is continuous and interrelated as demand appears to be supply‐driven and attraction‐based. Tourist interpretations of dark tourism are influenced by tourists' personal factors, the passage of “time” and the way the dark site is projected by the supply‐side. A refined marketing segmentation strategy is proposed taking into consideration the purpose of visit, the relevance of the dark heritage site to the tourist and the depth of the dark element.Originality/valueThe study's focus is narrow but the findings provide theoretical and practical insights into the conceptualisation dark tourism by considering supply and demand aspects and the related influencing factors. In doing so understanding of the phenomenon is enhanced.

The Impact of Host Community on Destination (re)branding: A Case Study of Hiroshima

This paper investigates local groups’ opinions on interpreting a dark heritage site for the promotion of tourism and analyzes their roles in tourism activities, through a case study of Hiroshima, Japan. As the first city suffered nuclear bombing, Hiroshima is a primary tourism destination in Japan but faced the challenge of revitalization. Fieldwork investigation methods, including semi-structured interviews, were applied. The results suggest that local people hold favorable attitudes toward tourism development. They conduct an alternative approach to rejuvenating Hiroshima by identifying the essence of the place – a cheerful and peaceful city – and incorporating it into tourism events. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.