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Dark tourism is a new coinage rooted in the perception of tourism activities at the sites or destinations connected to phenomena that bear varied, flexible, dynamic, diverse, and graded dark shades of life and civilization. It is now customary to subsume it within the sets of niche tourism. Some dark tourism sites attract visitors and generate sizable amounts of revenue, yet most of the world does not register much demand compared to other niches. Accordingly, promotion pursuit turned crucial to draw the market’s attention, creating its competitively distinct position.

Indeed, inherent issues, such as conceptual multiplicity within nature, aspect, attribute, and product paradigm, turn dark tourism into a complex phenomenon and put a challenge toward creating its distinct market position. Additionally, contradictions in semantic and functional significances, conflicts in framing morbid memory and authentic portrayal, variances in ethical, cultural and ideological interpretations, transition of liminal space identity, and diverse focuses in stakeholder engagement in imaging impede efforts to transform dark tourism attractions into a significant driver of tourism.

This chapter will locate and address the issues that challenge the marketability of dark attractions and dark tourism promotion more directly, with attention to the Indian context.

Visits to locations connected to historical atrocities, tragedy, suffering, or presumably dreadful events are referred to as “dark tourism”. While Bangladesh may not be widely known for dark tourism, several unexplored avenues may be of interest to those who engage in this type of unique and unconventional tourism experience. In addition to creating job opportunities and income generation in Bangladesh, it can achieve educational objectives, communicate with a broad audience, raise awareness of events of the past, and quench people's thirst for information, which can help them to comprehend a society. Though Bangladesh has several somber locations connected to tragic events including World War II, liberation war sites, mass killing sites, shipbreaking yards, Rohingya refugee camps, riots, and the mother language movement, traditional tourism predominates there. If managed responsibly, these varied resources, somber locations, and histories, some of which date back to 1800, could make Bangladesh a dark tourism destination. Although dark tourism in Bangladesh has the potential to contribute to historical awareness, preservation, educational opportunities, and socioeconomic development, it is yet unexplored due to a lack of knowledge, experience, policy, effective marketing, and some controversies. By approaching responsibly, Bangladesh can leverage its history to attract visitors' interests in exploring the darker aspects of the country's past. Hence, this chapter is designed to explore the status and potential significance, prospects, and challenges of dark tourism in Bangladesh. The findings will help policymakers, tourists, and other stakeholders to explore and enjoy enormous benefits from Bangladesh's untapped dark tourism opportunities.

War is one of the worst characteristics of human nature. Wars over territory, religion, and governance were and are always present through history. War and tourism seem dissonant at first glance. However, the post effects of war enable its components, such as battlefields and artefacts, to become tourist attractions. People share the impetus to visit war attractions such as battlefields, military museums, cemeteries, memorials, and other war-related sites. There is a supply for this type of tourism in exchange for the demand. This type of tourism is referred to in the literature as battlefield tourism. The meaning and definition of battlefield tourism are the main aim of this chapter. What is battlefield tourism? What are the components of battlefield tourism? How can battlefield tourism be defined? These are the primary questions this study tries to address.

The present book chapter deals with the problem of dark tourism as well as the resilience forms of consumption in post-disaster context.

The turn of the century characterised a radical change in the forms of tourism consumption. New forms of tourism as dark or thana tourism have captivated the attention of scholars and journalists. This book chapter centres efforts in dillucidating what are the key factors that determine the formation of a dark site. The text is inspired in my own ethnographies in Cromañon, Argentina and the Ground Zero, US.

As Phillip Stone puts it, not all dark shrines or sites welcome tourists. While some sites are reluctant to mass tourism, others are mainly organised around the figure of the tourist. La Republica de Cromañón is a night club where in a fire died 194 young. The site is today refurbished as a sanctuary to remind the victims. At a closer look, there is a tension between stakeholders at the time of promoting dark tourism in Cromañón. In the opposite the ground zero is fully designed to be visited by thousands tourists.

The originality of this research consists in the contraposition of two study cases which answer the question to what extent dark tourism is desired by locals. The findings lay the foundations towards the specialised literature in dark tourism studies. We discuss critically the nature of thanatopsis.

From ancient times, people have been drawn to the sites of past battles to pay their respects, learn about history, and gain a deeper understanding of the sacrifices made by those who fought. Today, battlefield tourism is a popular way for people to connect with the past and honor those who served their countries. Battlefield tourism is a significant component of war tourism and is not a new phenomenon (Smith, 1996). Even before the concepts of dark tourism or thanatourism emerged, studies were mostly carried out within the scope of heritage tourism at battlefields and war-related sites. However, with the increasing interest in the macabre and morbid aspects of history, dark tourism has gained popularity as a distinct form of tourism, encompassing sites related to death, tragedy, and disaster.

The debate about how to interpret war or how battlefield tourism relates to death is not new, and many studies on battlefield tourism compare and contrast various aspects of travel, whether they are dreary, educational, or enjoyable. To examine battlefield tourism from a historical perspective, firstly conceptually, it is necessary to consider how it has been perceived from the past to the present and what structures are involved. This section aims to examine the tourism of the battlefields from a historical perspective. In this context, at the first stage, its development in the literature was examined from a conceptual point of view, and then the turning points where tourism activities started were discussed.

This paper aims to investigate the visitor experience at a “lightest” dark tourism attraction, focusing on issues of thanatopsis and mortality mediation.

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 24 visitors to a “Dungeon”-style attraction in the UK (a site of “lightest” dark tourism). The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis; four themes were identified.

Reflection on, and contemplation of, issues of life and death was a common (but not universal) component of the visitor experience. Four forms of such reflection were apparent: considering absent/present death; thanatopsis (reflection on the self’s inevitable mortality); reflecting on the nature of death and dying in the past; and enjoyment of the opportunity to engage with death without fear in the safe setting of a visitor attraction. Some visitors also reflected on issues of individual and collective morality, in both past and present.

“Lightest” dark tourism is not necessarily about shallow experiences. Instead, many visitors are active agents, engaged in acts of making meaning about issues of death and life. This calls for a more sophisticated conceptualisation of such visitors.

The mortality mediation model is widely accepted as a way of explaining the experience of visiting places of death but has rarely been subject to empirical scrutiny. This is one of few studies to explore in detail issues of mortality mediation and thanatopsis in the context of “lightest” dark tourism.

数据是通过对 24 名英国“地牢”式景点（“最轻微”黑色旅游景点）游客的半结构化访谈收集的。访谈采用主题分析法进行分析并确定了 4 个主题。

本文是对“最轻微”黑暗旅游景点的游客体验的实证调查，重点关注死亡冥想和死亡临界问题。

对生死问题的反思和思考是游客体验的一个常见（但不普遍适用）组成部分。这种反思的四种形式是显而易见的：缺席/现有的死亡认知； 死亡冥想（对自我不可避免的死亡的反思）；反思死亡的本质和过去的死亡；并享受在安全的旅游景点环境中毫无畏惧地与死亡打交道的机会。一些参观者还反思了过去和现在的个人和集体道德问题。

“最轻微”的黑暗旅游不一定是肤浅的体验。相反，许多访客是积极的中间人，从事为生死问题赋予意义的行为。这需要对此类访问者进行更复杂的概念化理解。

死亡临界/调节模型作为一种解释访问死亡地的体验的方式被广泛接受，但很少通过经验研究来验证。这是在“最轻微”黑暗旅游背景下详细探讨死亡临界和死亡问题的少数研究之一。

Los datos se recopilaron a través de entrevistas semiestructuradas con 24 visitantes a un calabozo, un estilo de atracción turística en el Reino Unido (se diseña como un lugar de turismo oscuro "más ligero"). Las entrevistas se analizaron mediante análisis temático; Se identificaron 4 temas.

Este artículo es una investigación empírica de la experiencia del visitante en una atracción turística oscura "más ligera", que se centra en cuestiones de tanatopsis y mediación de la mortalidad.

La reflexión y la contemplación de cuestiones de la vida, así como la muerte, plantean un componente común (pero no universal) en la experiencia del visitante. Se identificaron, aparentemente, cuatro formas de reflexión: considerar la muerte presente/ausente; tanatopsis (reflexión sobre la inevitable mortalidad del yo); reflexionar sobre la naturaleza de la muerte y morir en el pasado y disfrute de la oportunidad de relacionarse con la muerte sin miedo a un entorno seguro, dentro de una atracción turística. Algunos visitantes también reflexionaron sobre cuestiones de moralidad individual y colectiva, tanto del pasado como del presente.

El turismo oscuro "más ligero", no se trata necesariamente de experiencias superficiales. En cambio, muchos visitantes son agentes activos, involucrados en actos de dar sentido a los problemas de la muerte y la vida. Esto requiere una conceptualización más sofisticada de dichos visitantes.

El modelo de mediación de la mortalidad es ampliamente aceptado, como una forma de explicar la experiencia de visitar lugares de muerte, pero rara vez ha sido objeto de un análisis empírico. Este es uno de los pocos estudios que explora en detalle cuestiones de mediación de la mortalidad y tanatopsis en el contexto del turismo oscuro "más ligero".

The present chapter reviews part of the literature that focuses on dark tourism and dark consumption. The main theories were placed under the critical lens of scrutiny. With strongholds and weaknesses, dark tourism seems to be enframed in an ‘economic-based paradigm’, which prioritises the managerial perspective over other methods. Like Dark Tourist, the Netflix documentary assessed in this chapter, this academic perspective accepts that the tourist's experience is the only valid source of information to understand the phenomenon. Rather, we hold the thesis that far from being a local trend, dark tourism evinces a morbid drive which not only emerges recently but involves other facets and spheres of society. We coin the term Thana-capitalism to denote a passage from risk society to a new stage, where the Other's death is situated as the main commodity to exchange. The risk society as it was imagined by Beck, set finally the pace to thana-capitalism. Dark Tourist proffers an interesting platform to gain further understanding of this slippery matter. In sharp contrast to Seaton, Sharpley or Stone, we argue that dark tourists are unable to create empathy with the victims. Instead, they visit these types of marginal destinations in order to re-elaborate a political attachment with their institutions. They consume the Other's pain not only to feel unique and special (a word that sounds all the time in the documentary) but also to affirm their privileged role as part of the selected peoples.

Der Tourismus ist in vielen Ländern zu einem bedeu‐tenden sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Phänomen gewor‐den, sodass die Erklärung seiner langfristigen Entwicklung von zunehmendem Interesse 1st.

Dark Tourism is a newly recognized niche tourism type that is first coined in 1996 by Lennon and Foley. This new term has attracted academicians and researchers globally. Till mid of 20th century, major work on dark tourism was limited to understanding its concept and giving it various names such as death tourism, black tourism, horror tourism, thanatourism, morbid tourism, and many more. After the mid-20th century, the focus of researchers was shifted to tourists’ psychology specifically on tourists’ motivation. Researchers suggested various motivational factors such as ‘curiosity of unusual,’ ‘education and learning,’ ‘historic interest,’ ‘inner purification,’ and ‘interested in death-related sites’ that influence tourists to seek dark attraction places. Recent research identified impact of dark places on visitors’ emotions and experiences. Some has argued that after visit tourists’ experience negative emotions such as depression or horror. While some suggested that dark tourism have positive emotion experience. This chapter is based on a secondary database, descriptive in nature, and aims to depict the motivation, purposes, and behavior of tourists toward dark attraction places that are linked to places of dark history.