Thanatourism: Witnessing Difficult Pasts

Abstract

This study looks at difficult heritage tourism as a form of visiting that to a great extent happens through the tourist's body as locus. Actual tourists are craving for real experiences in order to feel alive and difficult heritage sites offer this experience of presence to excess. In addition tourists are also interested in witnessing the past and its victims, and the establishment of the witnessing relationship depends on the interactive design present at the site. The difficult pasts in question are situated on site-specific locations in Northern America and Europe and represent classic thanatourist sites bearing on Holocaust, totalitarian communism and terrorism. Through an analysis of the multimodal and interactive design at each site, the article outlines various ways that place designs relate actual tourists and victims of the past.

A Comprehensive Perspective on Medical Tourism Context and Create a Conceptual Framework

“…Applying the push and pull factors deriving from the motivational attributes, the perceived quality of medical treatment experience can be measured [46]. According to a research of Crooks et al [4], push and pull factors incorporate service quality attributes of the medical service providers at the destination, along with the destination perception, process of travel and medical tourism experience as a whole.…”

Dark destinations – visitor reflections from a holocaust memorial site

“…Some such camp memorial sites protected in Europe under this legislation and open to visitors and include AuschwitzBirkenau, Gross-Rosen, Majdanek and Stutthof in Poland; and Buchenwald, Dachau and Sachsenhausen in Germany. Of these, Auschwitz-Birkenau is the largest and most researched (Thurnell-Read, 2009;Knudsen, 2011;Minić, 2012;Kidron, 2013), with over 1.43 million visitors in 2012 (Pa stwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2015). This study focuses instead on DachauGermany's first Nazi concentration camp, built in 1933 and visited by 800,000 tourists annually currently.…”

Editorial Introduction

“…Although human fascination with death seems constant, thanatourism (from the Greek thanatos [death]) has expanded within the last 200 years thanks to the influence of the media (Knudsen 2011). The primary feature of thanatourism is ''less a fascination with death per se, than feeling for the particular people who have died (personal, nationalistic, or humanitarian)'' (Seaton 1996: 243).…”