Dark Tourism Term Paper
Introduction. Tourism. Definition. Subgroups of Tourism. Dark tourism. Definition of Dark Tourism. Typology of dark tourism. History of Dark Tourism. Dark Tourism Today. Dark Tourism good or bad? Attractions of dark tourism. Holocaust in Auschwitz. Must see” individuals attraction. Anne Frank and her life. Historic building. Motivations for dark tourism. Main points. Conclusion of motives. Conclusion. References.
Tourism is an activity which is mostly related with rest, new impressions while visiting other countries and places. In nowadays people are choosing wider horizons for trips so as the companies of tourism management can suggest health, sport, and rest or adventure tourism trip.
Identify the key motivators for tourists to visit Auschwitz and Anne’s Frank house
Intangibility- it is a service, not a product, and as a result it cannot be touched, just experienced.
Heterogeneity- each customer experiences a service in a different way.
,,Must see” individual attraction. The concentration camp has since reformed from being a location that millions attempted to escape in order to forget, into a place that stands as a memorial where visitors now attend to remember the atrocities that once occurred. There is a suggest that Auschwitz is an iconic site in the dark tourism, it is a site of paramount symbolic meaning and is now seen as a “must see” tourist attraction. Entry to Auschwitz is free, and guided tours are available for tourists. To date, many of the individual huts at Auschwitz now serve as exhibitions associated with individual nation-states affected by the Nazis, with mounds of spectacles, shoes, or artificial limbs encased behind glass, reminding the visitors of both the scale and scope of the inhumane genocide that once occurred. Whilst there were ovens used to burn human remains at Auschwitz, the greatest impact of the barbarity is achieved from visiting the site of Birkenau. The gatehouse and adjoining railhead where ‘selection’ of those for slave labor and those who would be gassed occurred are enduring images, most likely due to several fictional films, such as Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s list.
Anne Frank and her life. Anne Frank best known as young girl and author of ‘The Diary of Young Girl’ which is associated with the story of the Holocaust during World War II. She wrote it strictly for herself one day with hope that her diary will be published to the public so people could see the suffering of the Dutch people during the war. At age of 13 she started writing the diary, at age of 15 she died in Belsen concentration camp with hope to see a freedom.
A spike in paranormal investigations, which has resulted in an increase in dark tourism
The aim of this research was to introduce dark tourism and find motives that attract tourists to visit dark tourism. The strongest motivating factor that was analyzed in both attraction of dark tourism is educational. People wanted to receive information about the Nazis or the Communists, Auschwitz role in the Second World War, museum’s historic background. The second strongest motivating factor of tourists in the Anne Frank House was emotional, willingness to feel connected with one's heritage. The more the tourists felt the emotional connection with the attraction the more interested they were in the place. People tried to feel the same so as Anna had during the World War II, not physically but emotionally.
