Go Niche

DARK TOURISM has been called the travel industry’s dirty little secret.

Also known as thanatourism, from the Greek mythological figure Thanatos – the personification of death – it refers to visiting a place purely for its association with death and suffering.

It reached its nadir in Soham, England, in 2002, when residents had to plead with coach loads of gawping day trippers to stay away after the murders of two school girls.

Appalling, isn’t it? But then you get to thinking about your own experiences as a dark tourist and you start to feel uncomfortable.

Because the fact is that dark tourism is everywhere, from your trip to the Battle of the Boyne visitor site – which can seem comfortingly distant in time – to the Twin Towers memorial garden in New York, where the wounds are still fresh.

Is the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau to be lauded or avoided? Is a visit to Flanders Field an exercise in respect, or in grief tourism? What about the 8,000 skulls in a glass shrine in Cambodia, or the deserted classrooms of Chernobyl?

The Bodies exhibition, which passed through this country, gave rise to a furore about whether it is right and proper to display the dead in this way. But what about the bog bodies in our own museums – should a dead person really constitute a visitor attraction?

Whatever your views, it’s easy to see there’ll be plenty to talk about at the Institute for Dark Tourism Research, which launches next April at the UK’s University of Central Lancashire.

Tickets for the one-day conference are on sale online for £89 (€103) each. The only question is: does going count as dark tourism too?

- dark-tourism.org.uk