Dark Tourism: An ethical dilemma

Abstract

The study conceptualizes the ideas of dark tourism and dark tourist sites in relation to the ethical dilemmas with the supplier’s perspective. The study argues the definitional characteristics of dark tourism suggesting that at many instances, suppliers of sites associated with death disagree with the darkness or touristic approaches attached to the site. In order to understand this phenomenon, the current study focuses on explaining the literature of dark tourism and dark tourist sites and different concepts enclosed. Furthermore, the study develops an argument of ethics in dark tourism literature explaining the ethical issues the management or suppliers of dark sites encounter. To relate the literature with real world settings, the study focuses on the Case of July 22nd in Norway studying the July 22nd Centre located in Oslo. Three semi structured interviewees were conducted from the employees of the Centre focusing on themes of acceptability, authenticity, and management related issues. Findings suggest the existence of all the attributes of a dark tourist site mentioned by Stone (2006) in July 22nd Centre, yet the centre is not called as dark site or even a tourist site. The study concludes suggesting the existence of ethical dilemmas which affect the definition of sites associated to death. Hence, all sites associated with death cannot be referred to as “dark” and neither “touristic” arguing the introduction of new concepts (Dim sites) which can better explain different sites in the different scenarios.