The dark tourism

Presentation of the Problem

Tourism covers numerous forms of travel and a broad range of destinations. Dark Tourism describes a niche type of tourism which covers the visitation of places where tragedies or historically noteworthy deaths have occurred of institutions dealing with the heritage of humanity (Tarlow, 2005). Especially in the last decades, dark tourism has become seemingly more popular and has received more attention (Stone, 2009). Foley and Lennon (1999) state that tourism associated with sites of death is registering a rapid growth. Smith (1996) found in her research on war and tourism that the memorabilia of warfare and allied products probably forms the largest single category of tourist attractions in the world, despite the tragedies and dissuasive incidents which have happened there. One of the earliest examples of dark tourist sites in the beginning of the 19th century was a jailhouse in the United States of America, which received public interest because of its architectural innovations and novel practices (Stone, 2009).

Meanwhile, visiting sites of death and disaster has developed into a worldwide phenomenon. But the demand for dark tourism spots is versatile. Beside the matter of death, interest in culture, history or simply the desire for entertainment are possible reasons why millions of people are visiting places of dark tourism (Stone, 2006). Despite an increasing amount of studies on the topic (Seaton, 1996; Lennon and Foley, 2000; Sharpley and Stone, 2009) there is still a lack of understanding what actually motivates humans to visit sites of dark tourism and to engage themselves with the topics of death, disaster and genocide. Due to the fact that dark tourism is a growing form of tourism, it is necessary to understand why people are motivated to visit places where other people have suffered.

Aims of the Bachelor Thesis

The purpose of this study is to identify the motives of visitors visiting former battlefields where historically important battles have been fought. This study will give a better, theoretically informed understanding of tourist motivation and its role in the decision making process. The following questions will be examined in regards to this topic:

1. Which push factors play a role in visitors´ motivation to battlefields?
2. Which pull factors play a role in visitors´ motivation?
3. What role do particularly level of education, interest in history, media and personal connection play in visitors´ motivation?
4. Which other visitor motives influence the decision to visit battlefields?

Methodology

Structure of the Thesis

This Bachelor Thesis is divided into a theoretical and an empirical part. The goal of the theoretical part is to provide and explain the theories, terms and definitions used in this study to form a thorough literature review to review literature for designing the research and interpreting the findings.

Dark Tourism

Definition of Dark Tourism

Lennon and Foley described the term dark tourism as “…the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” (1996:198). An example of very early forms of dark tourism would be the gladiatorial games of the Roman area or public executions in medieval age (Stone, 2009). Boorstin (1964, in Stone 2009) states that the first organised tour in England in 1838 was a trip by train to witness the hanging of two murderers.

Get Help With Your Essay

If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
Find out more about our Essay Writing Service

Dark tourism sites and attractions are not only becoming more and more popular (Sharpley, 2005) but also vary enormously in their presentation of death. They reach from jocular houses of horror, over death sites of famous people to places of mass murder like the Holocaust death camps. Seaton (1996) cites a number of attractions, including the battlefield of Waterloo and the buried city of Pompeii; the latter is said to be the greatest and most famous thanatoptic travel destination of the Romantic period (Seaton, 1996).

In contrast to Stone, Seaton prefers using the definition “thanatourism” instead of dark tourism. He describes thanatourism as being the “…travel to a location wholly, or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death, particularly, but not exclusively, violent death, which may, to a varying degree be activated by the person-specific features of those whose deaths are its focal objects” (1996:240). This would mean that people, travelling to dark sites, are active going there in order to experience the aura of such places. In addition to this, he believes that thanatourism is defined by the consumer’s motives and that individual traveler motivation do play a role in this kind of tourism.

Another definition synced with dark tourism is the term “black spots”, which are “…commercial developments of grave sites and sites in which celebrities or large numbers of peoples have met with sudden and violent deaths” (Rojek, 1993:136). Rojek shows three different examples of Black Spots – the anniversary of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s murder in Dallas, Texas, the annual candlelight vigil in memory of Elvis Presley and the annual pilgrimage to the part of the Californian highway where James Dean died in a car crash.

Both the expressions “dark tourism” and “thanatourism” will be used in this research, because they have the same meaning, but are differently interpreted. Thanatourism is based on the motivational aspect, while dark tourism is attraction respectively location based. In contrast, black spots are a parts of the dark tourism spectrum and rather describe places of sudden and violent death. In this case, cemeteries would not be part of black spot sites. Seatons interpretation will be used in the following study. As I am investigating motives of people visiting dark tourist sites, I adopt the definition of Seaton because it is more detailed and better understandable than the definitions of Rojek, Lennon and Foley. Furthermore the definition fits better as motivational perspective.

Categorisation of dark tourism

Dark tourism is, in its various forms, multi-faceted, multi tiered and exists in a variety of social, cultural, geographical and political contexts (Stone, 2009). A full categorisation of all death-related attractions is very complex and difficult. Furthermore, in contrast to Foley and Lennon, Seaton (2006) states that thanatourism works on coherence between two elements: first, if the traveler has only one or more motives to visit a place of death, and secondly, the extend to which the interest in death is person-centered or scale-of-death centered.

Referring to Figure 1, it can be concluded that people visiting sites of death, for example a battlefield or a prison where a relative has died or has suffered, have a weak thanatourism element in their motivation. The interest in death is person-centered because this is the purpose of visit in the first instance. In contrast, people who are visiting the same sights but have no relatives or friends which might have suffered there, show a strong thanatourism element. They are interested in death itself and are fascinated by those sights.

Dark tourism supply and demand

It is obvious that people have long been attracted to places of death and disaster. In terms of supply, there has been a rapid growth in the provision of such attractions or experiences; indeed, there appears to be an increasing number of people keen to profit from places of death as tourist attractions, such as a farmer in Pennsylvania who offered a tour of the crash site of the United Airlines Flight 93 – one of the 9/11 aircraft (Bly, 2003). Marcel (2004) recognised that there is a huge range and diversity of dark tourism supply when she examined whether “death makes a holiday”, and denoted that dark tourism is a part of the tourism phenomenon and called it “dirty little secret”.

In order to investigate the phenomenon of consumer demand of dark tourist sites, it is necessary to examine the topic both from the supply and demand perspective. As Seaton (1996) believes, “dark tourism is essentially a behavioral phenomenon, defined by tourist’ motives as opposed to particular characteristics of a site or attraction”. To construct any framework, both demand and supply needs to be taken into consideration.

For Foley and Lennon, dark tourism is a temporally, basically western phenomenon “based upon non-purposeful visits due to serendipity, the itinerary of tour companies or the merely curious who happen to be in the vicinity” (2000:23). Therewith, in the two researcher’s opinion, dark tourism demand is created unintentionally and is now part of tour companies’ programs, with the objective to make money by getting tourists to a “dark” area which is located close to the routes. In this case, the researchers strongly declare that dark tourism is supply-driven. Due to the question whether people coincidentally come across dark tourist sites, as Foley and Lennon (2000) believe, this topic has to be considered critically.

It has to be mentioned that demand and supply are dynamic and always changing. For example, London Dungeon has always exposed horrifying and gory sculptures. These exhibits were the main reason why people came to visit this place. If the management would decide to remove the electric chair, the demand would decrease rapidly (Sharpley, 2009).

It is still unclear whether thanatourism is still getting more and more popular because of the increasing amount and diversity of attractions, or because of the growing interest of people looking for the macabre and frightening (West, 2004). According to Sharpley (2009), there exists a ‘continuum of purpose’ of supply of dark tourism sites or experiences. He believes that there are tourist attractions which have become dark tourist sites ‘by accident’ and places which are directly intended to make profit. Figure 2 shows the four ‘shades’ of tourism, reaching from ‘pale’ to ‘black’ tourism.

According to Sharpley (2009), the four shades of dark tourism are devided into four categories. Tourists with a low interest in in death and who are visiting sites which are unintended to be tourist attractions are “pale tourists”. Its oposite would summarise people with a high fascination with death and visiting dark tourist sites on purpose. This kind of dark tourism is referred as “the darkest tourism possible”. Concerning supply and demand, tourists with fascination with death but visiting unintendet dark tourism sites are demanding grey tourism. Grey tourism supply would delineate sites which are intentionally established to exploit death, attracting visitor with only a minor interest in death.

Battlefield tourism

Battlefield tourism refers to the visitation to sites associated with warfare. These include locations like battlefields, memorials or military graves as well as museums and other structures that commemorate wars, battles and associated events or atrocities (Seaton, 1999). Places like these have attracted tourists from all over the world for more than thousand years. Alexander the Great was one of the first known battlefield tourists, when he visited the Tomb of Achilles and ancient Troy during his invasion of Asia (Wilcken, 1967). Battlefield tourism increased significantly during the last century, which could be ascribed to the growing number of military conflicts since the early 1900s and more generally, the continuing growth of tourism (Sharpley, 2009). Especially the time after the First World War represented a turning point in the history of battlefield tourism. Visits to battlefield sites like Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte’s last battle near Brussels in 1815, started to become more and more popular (Lloyd, 1998).

The ongoing search by the tourism industry for new attractions has created a very relevant tourism phenomenon around battlefield tourism (Ryan, 2007). The paradox of a site of battle or war is that visitors are able to move around freely on a once unsafe place where many people have lost their lives. Considering the macabre and abhorrent atmosphere which is radiated by place of war, it is remarkable that some tourists are accepting a long journey in order to get impressed by a site of war, express gladness or even experience sadness.

Battlefield Tours

For a battlefield tour visitor, a battlefield tour has the purpose of understanding what happened and why (Sharpley, 2006). Therefore it can be concluded that tourists belonging to this form of visitation are primary interested in history and the very details of the battle. Even pictures, closest studies and primary sources can not describe the atmosphere of a place where fights have taken place. For example, it is necessary to stand at the beach of Ford Island, Hawaii, to understand how the feeling must have been when the Japanese striking force, consisting of 400 warplanes, attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on December 7 in 1941. With a little bit of imagination, the visitor can see through the eyes of the soldier, although the site may have changed over the years.

To go into more detail and to figure out why tourists visit battlefields, it is important to distinguish between the types of visitation. In order to categorise the survey in Chapter …, categories of visitations have been pointed out and confronted in pairs: Are the tourists visiting battlefields as a part of an organised tour or are they individual visitors? Do visitors have a weak or a strong thanatoursim element in their motivation? Did people come to battelfield sites voluntarily (Leisure visitors) or have they been “invited” as part of a company outing or an advanced training course (Business/Educational visitors)?

Pilgrimage

Battlefield pilgrimages can be defined as “the travelling for remembrance with the focus on the spiritual and emotional experience of visiting graves and memorials” (Stone, 2009:194). Beside veterans, immediate family members may also visit a battlefield for remembrance. For example, when death was the reason why a couple’s marriage ended, it can be very important for the personal healing process of the widow to visit the battlefield where her husband died or the grave where he is buried. In these cases again, a weak thanatoursim element is perceptible beacause the dead are know and the interest in death is person-centred.

But not only immediate relatives have a spiritual relationship to family members who died in war. Also children, whose grandfather lost his life in a battle, can show their pride of having a great warrior. Furthermore, travelling together in a group to a battlefield can be major social event, such as an anniversary. A pilgrimage can also encourage conversations between generations which might not happen anywhere else.

Types of Battlefield visitors

Leisure visitors

According to a survey commissioned by the Royal British Legion in 2006 (based upon a sample of 1000 respondents across the United Kingdom) leisure visitors are the majority of modern tourists at battlefields (Stone, 2009). These visitors show a strong interest in history, especially military history. This popular interest arose from a fascination with the soldier and the battle, due to the fact that the proportion of the population who is serving in the military is diminishing (Holmes, 2006). Another reason for the increasing interest in soldiers could be popular films like Inglorious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino, USA 2009. Depending if leisure visitors travel to battlefield sites on their own or as part of tours, they can either show a high interest (or thanaourism element) in death and disaster or just regard them as side trips of the whole tour being unconcerned with dark tourism.

Educational Visits and Visits by the Military

Visits to battlefields, if procurable, are undertaken by schools and other educational establishments. An opportunity is given to young people and students to understand the background and context of topics learned at school or university. Educational visits to battlefields differ from general leisure visits in points of learning objectives and the chance to provide support for certain parts of the national curriculum (Sharpley, 2006). Furthermore, teachers with personal interests in military history are able to share their enthusiasm and can provoke some thoughts about morality in their student’s minds, which is also an important part of education.

Members of the Armed Forces, who view the battlefield as part of the future, also belong to the category of educational visitors. The British Armed Forces use battlefields for tactical training and study (Ryan, 2007), leadership lessons and planning how modern troops would operate on the same ground. Non-military organisations in the United Kingdom, like Corporate Battlefields and Business Battlefields are also using battlefields for leadership or management development programs. People participating in such events are thought to learn from the lessons in history and build effective leading teams to increase business performance. Often, members of such excursion are forced to participate and cannot afford to decline in order to keep their jobs. Therefore it can be concluded that, educational visits, are not “voluntarily” by the majority.

Veterans

Even if this is just a small part of battlefield tour visitors, some veterans still have the desire to visit once more the place where they have fought, to re-experience the place, maybe for the last time in their lives. Some of them make themselves available for tours to narrate their stories to other visitors, who get the chance to get a better and very authentic presentation of the site. Others simply want to understand what happened or the significance of their own role when they fought a war (Stone, 2009). It can be assumed that, for these kind of visitors and according to Seatons (1996) Thanatoursim continuum, there is no specific interest in death and desaster observable.

Tourist Motivation

Tourist motivation can be defined “as the global integrating network of biological and cultural forces which gives value and direction to travel choices, behavior and experience” (Pearce, Morrison & Rutledge, 1998) Motivation has always been an important factor of leisure and tourism study and a basic topic in tourism research (Crompton, 1979; Veal, 1997). According to Wahab (1975), it is fundamental that, for tourism studies and development, the area of travel motivation is taken into consideration. This means that tourism suppliers can benefit from understanding what travelers want in order to predict future travel patterns and adapt the offer. Furthermore, certain tourist types can be selected as target segments for travel and tourist marketing (Smith, 1996) According to Pearce (2007:50), motivation could also be the “driving force behind all actions”. People do things because they have a number of motives which can differ enormously from each other. Some visitors travel to Paris for seeing the Eiffel Tower because of its height and the beautiful view over the city, others go to the same city for shopping and the good food. The destination is the same, but different motives brought individuals there and different or even same activities could be based on different motives. Seaton (1997) believes that motivation is generated by an internal feeling, also called an individual’s “need”, which drives people to achieve certain goals. When all goals have been reached, the need reduces and the individual returns to the initial point until new motives, which are coming up soon after the satisfaction of the last ones, have to be met.

Tourists can be easily classified in terms of demographics, types of travel, economic well being and many other factors, but it is difficult to identify why tourists “do what they do” (Woodside and Martin, 2008). In contrast to the purpose of travel which can be, for example, classified in “business” or “leisure”, the private needs and wants are very hard to measure, as they vary between individuals. There is a wide range of human wants and needs and also difficulties in measuring them which poses problems in making theories about travel motivation. To understand how people form their decisions, the decision making process will be briefly touched and also a better explanation of human needs, referring to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, has to be provided.

Decision Making Process

Decision making can be summarised as the process of eliminating or reducing doubt about any alternatives to make an expedient choice from among them (Solomon, 2006). Nearly all decisions involve a certain amount of risks because there can never, or rarely, be complete knowledge about all alternatives. Furthermore there has to be a degree of uncertainity; otherwise, if not, people would always choose the right way and would never do any mistakes in their lives. In order to determine an ideal decision, a perfect decision environment has to be the basis including all the information of all alternatives. Limitations like time and effort interfere in making ideal decision. For example, nobody would spend 2 hours driving around in the city waiting for the closest parking lot to the supermarket to get vacant.

The decision-making process is influenced by internal and external variables. Attitudes, beliefs, intentions and motivation belong to the psychological part. Variables like time, price and pull factors are completing the external or nonpsychological part. These factors are predetermined, for example the good weather in the Caribbean or the time for going there because of limited holidays. The decision making process involves five stages:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

Maslow is said to be one of the founders of humanistic psychology, a school of psychology concerned with the human context for the development of psychological theory (Hoffman, 1999). In Motivation and Personality, first published in 1954, Maslow describes his hierarchy of needs and its relation to motivation in general. In his opinion, all human needs can be organised in a pyramid, consisting of five stages: physiological needs on the bottom and self-actualisation on the top. In between, safety needs, belongingness or acceptance and esteem needs have to be satisfied before reaching the highest level. An individual normally tries to satisfy the physiological needs fist, before higher-leveled needs are emerging. According to Maslow, all human beings follow this order, with slight variations. Sometimes higher levels of needs can predominate, although some basic needs have not been satisfied fully (Maslow, 1970). Figure … shows Maslow’s 5 stages of needs in a pyramid. Adapted from Chaman, 2001-4

Based on this information, the theory has to be applied on tourist motivation. Pearce (1993), for example, has analysed 400 travel experiences of travelers in Europe, Canada, Australia and the USA. One positive and one negative experience had to be written down by the 200 respondents. In accordance to the pyramid of needs, the data was analysed and coded into five categories. For positive experiences, the following result for each need satisfied could me indicated:

To summarise these findings, Pearce (1993) states that travel motivations show characteristics of an “approach-avoidance paradigm” (Woodside, 2008). This means that, for travelers, positive experiences contribute to the higher-leveled stages, while negative experiences rather contribute to the medium leveled stages. Further, Pearce (1993) believes that holiday destinations attract people because tourists see a chance in fulfilling personal growth and love needs.

Push and Pull Factors

According to Dann (1981), tourists are motivated by a push or pull to a destination in order to satisfy needs. He defines push and pull factors in tourism as forces which drive people to move away from a place (push) and factors which draw them to new locations (pull). For example, someone leaves his/her city of birth because of an increasing crime rate and low quality of life (push) and moves to another city with a good infrastructure and where his/her family lives (pull) . Crompton (1979) states that the travel industry focuses more on pull factors and that there is a lack for push factors. Pull factors can be, in contrast to push factors, much better influenced because they are rarely internal. Therefore, travel agencies and tour operators pull tourists to certain sites with the help of creating needs. If someone wants to escape from everyday life and finds a picture of the Caribbean, the tourism supplier pulls potential visitors away from their current locations. Crompton (1979) also mentioned socio-psychological motives which can be the driving forces to make holidays but the effective choice of destination was the pulling power of the destination itself. He believes that socio-psychological motives can direct tourists towards a particular destination but, in the bottom line is that pull factors are prevailing in the decision making process.

In contrast, Uzzell (1984) believes that tourists are rather motivated to visit destinations which match their psychological needs than going to places because of the specific qualities which are offered there. He does not believe that both push and pull factors are motivation fatctors. In his opinion, pull factors are rather explanations for common touristic activities then relevant motivators. He adds that pull factors should even be eliminated from the study of toursim motivation. Crompton (1979) states that, in reality, individuals experience simultaneously mixtures of both push and pull factors and those factors do not necessarily stand alone. As mentioned before, there can be several push factors motivating an individual but also more than one pull factor offered by a site. For example, someone might be pushed to visit Pearl Harbour because his/her grandfather has died there during World War II. Apart from that, a travel agency is offering a two-week holidays package in Hawaii especially prepared for singles, pulling people to the island. Consequently, idividuals might experience both push and pull facors.

Push and Pull factors should not be treated as acting independently from each other, even though they might correspond to individual stages in travel decision making (Crompton, 1979). Individuals travel because they are pulled by destinations and attractions and at the same time pushed by their own internal forces.

Expectancy theory

In contrast to the theory of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, the expectancy theory, which was invented by Victor Vroom in 1964, focuses rather on outcomes than on needs. In order to be motivated, Vroom linked effort, performance and outcomes to motivation. There are three variables which are mentioned: Expectancy, Valence and Instrumentality. Increased performance is the result of increased effort, which is the basic belief of expectancy (Green, 1992). An example of expectancy would be the belief that something will get better if someone works harder for it. The second variable, instrumentality, is the belief that someone performs well, a valued outcome will be received (Green, 1992). In example, if someone does a good job, it will be valued and he/she maybe gets a pay raise. Valence is defined as the importance that the individual places upon the expected outcome (Green, 1992). This would mean that if an employee is mainly motivated by money, he/she would not value other offers like a new office or additional time off.

Having understood these variables, the basic idea behind the theory is that individuals adapt their level of effort depending on the possible outcome. In Vroom’s opinion, if somebody believes that if he/she is working harder but the rewards and performances will not be increased and furthermore offered rewards are not valued, the individual will not be motivated. It is important to mention that all three variables have to be fulfilled in order to achieve motivation. The theory can be applied to any situation where someone expects a certain outcome to happen. In relation to dark tourism and the visitation of battlefields, tourists expect certain, in most cases intangible, outcomes. Regarding the example of pilgrimage and spiritual experience, people believe that the visitation of graves or places where relatives or friends have died can result in better understanding the past events and an increased personal healing process.

Motivational Strength

It depends on motivational strength whether somebody prefers reaching one goal opposed to another. Despite the diversity of studies and theories, most of them are sharing a basic idea: individuals have a certain amount of energy which must be directed towards goals (Pearce, 1993). From a psychological perspective, reaching a goal can be equalised with being motivated. If a need arouses, which is growing by and by, the individual wants to satisfy it as soon as possible. For example, if someone is hungry, he/she wants to stop this unpleasant feeling by eating food. As soon as the need is satisfied, the balanced state returns which is called homeostasis (Solomon, Bamossy, Askegaard and Hogg, 2006). Human behaviour is driven by a basic mechanism to reduce unpleasant tensions, which is termed drive theory. In terms of marketing, the unpleasant state reffers to the need of goods and services which are desired. Though, to be more precise, the degree of motivation is not always the same. For example, the motivation to buy a new one is very high because the old one has been used for many years. If the person who desires a new TV would have bought one a few months ago, the motivation to go again to the store and spend money would be much lower.

The research on motivation in order to understand what actually drives behaviour focuses more on cognitive factors rather than on biological ones. For this research, the drive theory is not crucial and will not be applied. Though, another theory about motivation is taken into consideration. The Expectancy theory suggests that people prefer one product or service over another because they believe that this choice has “more positive consequences” for them (Solomon, Bamossy, Askegaard and Hogg, 2006:93). For this study it is important to find out which positive consequences could be important to visitors to battlefields and to dark tourism sites in general.

Motivators

Motivation: History

According to Smith (1996), sites of war attract basically people with a strong interest in history and military strategists. These individuals are keen to analyse the events of the past while walking around the area. This would mean that a battlefield visitor does not necessarily have to be attracted by the presence of death; interest in history can also be the reason why people visit battlefields.

The same results were found by Crompton (1979) and Anderton (1995), who stated that cultural and historical interest can be a strong motivator for pleasure travel. Further, Crompton (1979) drew the conclusion, from interviewing 42 adult people, that education and novelty are important travel motivators. In contrast to this, Beech (2000), who, amongst other topics, investigated the visitors´ motivation to concentration camps, does not wholeheartedly believe that visitors with no connection to the camp are motivated by only interest in learning or history. The same theory can be applied to battlefield tourism.

There is, from a historical perspective, a demand in battlefield tourism, National Geographic released in 1992 a guide for battle sites including their histories called the Guide to Civil War National Battlefield Parks in the USA, including photographs and maps showing troop movements. Today there are huge amounts of books dealing with battlefield tours and