Importance of Dark Tourism for the Society - Thesis Proposal Example

Research proposal: Topic: The importance of dark tourism for the society. Overview: It is an intrinsic trait of human nature that attracts humans towards the stories, narratives, incidents and places that are known for adventure, death and disaster. An estimated amount of 2.5 million visitors have been to San Antonio in 1999, to visit the location which was the death-place for some 179 men as they attempted to defend their opinion of visualizing Texas as an independent state. (Breuer 2002 cited in Yuill, 2003). Similarly, about 434000 tourists made their visit to the camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum where an estimated 1.5 million people were slaughtered in the course of the Second World War. (Beech 2000, p. 32). Such places symbolize the harsh realities of human history. Darkness, cruelty, crime and blood is reflected in the very nature of such sites. However, despite all these elements, such sites also make very good visiting places for tourists and are of great significance not only to the ministry of tourism, but also to the whole society in general and the government in particular. Dark tourism sites are very important for the economic strength of a country given the large number of tourists they attract. The places exhibiting dark tourism are not limited only to actual places where some accident took place in the past but there is also a range of places that are considered to be in the domain of dark tourism sites that are in some way related to horrific events. These may be museums or other places of cultural and historic significance displaying elements memorizing bad moments in the past. There may be times when a cinema projecting movies based on accidents of the past like Titanic might also be quite related to the subject matter. Given the widespread popularity of dark tourism among the people all over the world, dark tourism sites have huge potential of adding a lot to a country’s GDP provided that government strategically plans to increase the opportunities for tourists interested in dark tourism. This requires careful analysis of all the factors that influence and are influenced by the dark tourism that include but are not limited to age of people, imminence and severity of the incident and its cultural and national significance Objectives: 1. To determine the cause of people’s motivation for dark tourism sites. 2. To determine if people’s liking for dark tourism is governed by a certain age limit. 3. To compare the level of attraction people have for old vs new dark tourism sites. 4. Determine the ways in which people’s liking for dark tourism can be used for making this business more profitable. Literature review: Before getting into an in-depth analysis of the purpose and the study design to be adopted for this research, it is customary to define the dark tourism. Dark tourism was initially referred to by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley as “…the phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” (1996:198 cited in Yuill, 2003). Later in the same report, (Yuill, 2003) pointed towards Foley and Lennon who went a step further in their definition of dark tourism in their book “Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster,” when they clearly stated what can and can not be considered as dark tourism by writing, “It is those who visit due to serendipity, the itinerary of tourism companies or the merely curious who happen to be in the vicinity who are, for us, the basis of dark tourism” (2000:23 cited in Yuill, 2003). Dark tourism gains inspiration from the motivation visitors express in its favor. It is sometimes also referred to as “grief tourism.” It occurs “when you travel somewhere to visit a scene of some tragic event.” (Kendle, 2006). A more comprehensive definition was put forward by Tony Seaton who coined the term “thanatourism” in place of dark tourism and visualized it as visitor specific motivation to learn about the incident of death or disaster with special emphasis on learning the psychological underpinnings of the deceased that led them to their unfortunate destiny. Seaton explained the term with the help of its two additional features. First, Seaton called thanatourism as a behavioral phenomenon, and secondly, Seaton argued that the intensity of interest people show towards thanatourism varies dependind upon different variables. The whole argument of Seaton can be put forward in a nutshell saying that what drives dark tourism is fundamentally the tourists’ personal traits and approach towards the subject. (Seaton, 1999) categorized the dark tourism phenomena into five types depending upon the source of motivation which are, 1. Visit to places to see live death punishment like hanging in the public. 2. Visit to places where fatalities were recorded. 3. Visit to such death places as monuments and graveyards. 4. Visit to re-enactment sites. 5. Visit to places of cultural significance that have gathered remnants of past deadly incidents like museums. This study is intended to address the last of the five categories mentioned above in particular. Research methodology: Research to explore various aspects of the motivation tourists express towards the export has been extremely limited. In that context, this research assumes an exploratory role in the matter. In order to completely address the points mentioned in the objectives, it is customary to select two different methods based on both qualitative and quantitative work. The former requires interviewing the personnel from the concerned community and the latter is based upon collecting information from the tourists as well as the local administrating staff with the help of questionnaires. The methodology will fundamentally revolve around conducting the survey of the tourists making visit to the place, but a group of the administration staff will be specifically focused upon to validate and add to the information gathered from the tourists. This is because of the fact that the administrative staff remains in contact with every tourist all the time and helps the tourist with the new things and required information. The staff records and updates the number of visitors and their particulars regularly. Being in the public circle for the whole lengthy of time, they are the most appropriate personnel to ask about the visitors’ particular interests, their sources of motivation and the visitors’ comments as they roam about the place. There are a lot of factors that can best be explained by none other than the administrative staff. Besides, the public is likely to respond to the questions in the best possible manner in the presence of administrative staff than otherwise. Besides, a questionnaire is intended to add to the information. Because of the sensitive natured environment of the site, the research intends to gather the information with the help of a mail-out survey instead of the usual one-to-one interactive session. On the spot questionnaire filling might as well not be appropriate because the practice could generate biased responses to the questions in the questionnaire, given the immediate emotional disturbance of the visitors caused by the traumatic incident remnants and symbols displayed in the dark tourism site. Besides, it is not ethically justified to question people when they are not in their right state of mind. Sample questions: Questionnaires will be open ended to let the responded have complete room to interpret his/her thoughts into words. Although the actual questionnaire will be formulated upon the commencement of the research, yet some of the potential questions intended to be included into the questionnaire are mentioned below: How often do you visit dark tourism sites? What is the significance of dark tourism to you? When did you first learn about the incident and the place? How did you come to know about the place? What made you visit the place? How has your experience been? Did visiting the place increase your knowledge about the accident that had happened? Did you consider the visit worth the expenditure? Would you recommend others to visit the place? These and other such questions are intended to result into the generation of enough information to reveal the potential causes of visitor’s motivation towards the dark tourism sites. Research design: The London Dungeon will be selected as the dark tourism site where plays are arranged to reflect the serial killing of prostitutes by a killer in London in the 1800s. (www.enjoyengland.com, n.d.). “Located in Tooley Street and best accessed from London Bridge station, the venue offers the visitor several historically gory events in a way suitable for all the family.” (www.londondungeonguide.com, n.d.). First step in the research design is the formulation of “focus groups”. According to (Krueger, 1988, p. 18), focus group is fundamentally a carefully designed discussion that serves to motivate those involved in it to share the maximum amount of required information in the most relaxed manner. “It is conducted with approximately seven to ten people by a skilled interviewer.” (Krueger, 1988, p. 18). It is a highly interactive section in the form of an interview in which the researcher pre-plans the questions to be asked. “Falling within the constructivist research model (Kvale, 1996) the interview is seen as a conversation in which the researcher asks questions to enable the interviewees to tell their own stories in their own terms.” (Coates, 2004). In order to achieve this, management of the place will be requested to nominate 10 most knowledgeable staff members to indulge in a well designed focus group with the researcher. The researcher intends to investigate the matter and have the staff’s opinion on the matter through semi-structured interviews so that the staff members involved in the process feel as comfortable as possible and respond in the best possible way. The research design is intended to be a one time cross-sectional study meant to find the causes of motivation from the record of history maintained by the administration. The researcher intends to gather information only from voluntary respondents. To identify the voluntary respondents, the researcher has designed a mechanism that goes as follows: When the visitors enter the place, they will be requested to fill out a form for the record of visitors’ database. For a period of one month, a card will be displayed over the form drop-off bucket placed beside the place of entry into the site that will read that the tourists filling out the form will get an opportunity to have their say in a detailed off-site survey. After reading that card, the tourists choosing to fill the form will be regarded as voluntary participants and will be requested to drop the form into a separate bucket. After a period of one month, sample of participant tourists will be selected from the bulk of voluntary respondents. Data analysis methods: The research fundamentally relies on a two step methodology of which the first is based on the focus group that involves the administrative staff and the second step is based on the survey questionnaire filled and mailed to the respondent by the voluntary tourists. The non-numeric responses will be graded on a scale of 1 to 5 corresponding to irrelevant, likely, relevant, very close and exact. These will be the measures of tourists’ causes of motivation as predicted by the researcher and offered as choices in the questionnaire. The results will be analyzed with the help of SPSS. Results of the SPSS will suggest the exact causes of motivation as expressed by the majority of participants. Conclusion: Research to realize different aspects of the relation of people with dark tourism has been very limited. This research is quite useful in that it tends to explore various hidden aspects of the people’s association with dark tourism. The research is intended to produce useful results for the government to strategically build plans for creating more dark tourism sites that perfectly suit the visitors’ cravings and maximize the GDP for the country with an increased interest of public in tourism. Time scale: The intended schedule for the research is as follows: Time Task 1 month Data collection 1 month Study 1 month Interviews 1 month Questionnaire distribution and collection 15 days Data analysis 5 days Conclusion and recommendations References: Beech, J, 2000. “The Enigma of Holocaust Sites as Tourist Attractions – The Case of Buchenwald.” Managing Leisure Vol. 5, no. 1. pp: 29-41. DOI: 10.1080/136067100375722. Coates, N, 2004. “The ‘Stranger’, the ‘Sojourner’ and the International Student”. viewed 7 September 2010. . Kendle, A, 2006. “Dark Tourism: A Fine Line Between Curiousity and Exploitation.” viewed 7 September 2010. < http://www.vagabondish.com/dark-tourism-travel-tours/>. Krueger, RA, 1988. Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Print. Seaton, AV, 1999. “War and Thanatourism: Waterloo 1815-1914.” Annals of Tourism Research. Vol. 26, no. 1. pp: 130-159. Yuill, SM, December 2003. “Dark Tourism: Understanding Visitor Motivation at Sites of Death and Disaster.” Texas A&M University. viewed, 6 September 2010, . www.enjoyengland.com, n.d. “Dark England”. viewed 7 September 2010. . www.londondungeonguide.com, n.d. “The London Dungeon.” Diamond Publishing Ltd. viewed 7 September 2010. . Read More