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This introductory chapter synthesises an extensive and hot debate revolving around the role of precautionary doctrine in tourism fields. Although the industry faces serious risks and dangers, terrorism – just after 9/11 – situates as the most dangerous hazard and as a challenge for policymakers and practitioners. We have reviewed the pros and cons of the most important academic schools that focused on tourism security and risk perception theory. The urgency is given in creating a bridge between theory and practice in order to articulate the policies to the nature of each risk. Today risk perception theory lacks a robust methodological background that invariably led to a gridlock. Whether the demographic school advances in the multivariable correlation between class, ideology, income or education with risk perception, the sociological school lays the foundations towards a much deeper understanding of the impacts of risks in society. Rather, the radical turn – coming from a Marxist tradition – focuses on the limitations of risk perception theory. Finally, authors who form the psychological tradition, as stated in this chapter, highlight on the complexity of emotions and the inner world. All chapters in this book aim to provide fresh practical cases that reflect the socio-cultural background of the four continents.

An increasing number of studies claim on the decline of hospitality in the West. These works focus on the lack of tolerance or expressions against foreigners as the clear sign that something is changing. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic mainly marked a type of intolerance with the foreign tourists. This book chapter brings reflection on the plot of HBO Saga Westworld to understand the ways forms of hospitality in a post-modern world.

The present book chapter is based on the technique of content analysis or film ethnography which dissects elements of films and movies. In so doing, film ethnography occupies a central position in the constellations of qualitative methods.

The present piece is a critique on what specialists dubbed as robot tourism. Westworld shows not only the cautions policymakers should have on robot tourism but also how the depersonalisation process works. Basically, Westworld speaks us of a dystopian amusing park where rich guests travel to torture and victimise humanoids (hosts) who are unable to retaliate. Westworld brings reflection on the decline or the end of hospitality, at least as we know it.

Just after 9/11 some critical voices alerted Western hospitality was in decline. This chapter goes on in the same direction. Westworld brings the problems of free choice, the liberty as well as hospitality into the foreground.

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.

The scourge of terrorism has situated as one of the major risks and concerns for policy makers and authorities in the Western hemisphere. The attacks to WTC marked not only a first attack in the US soil but the prelude of a set of attacks perpetrated in the European urban metropolises. Over years, the classic literature punctuated on the negative impact of terrorism in the tourist destination. Recently, some voices have questioned this assumption holding that under some conditions the tourist demands recover to the earlier levels before the crisis. This chapter discusses critically not only the differentiation between risks and threats but also the different faces of terrorism. We also propose a model based on three dimensions: terrorism as a risk, terrorism as a threat and terrorism as a worry. As a conceptual model, the resulted hypotheses and ideas should be empirically validated in next layouts.

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.

Zygmunt Bauman was a Senior philosopher who did not need a previous presentation. His theses have shed light on modern philosophy and sociology globally. For Bauman, the liquid modernity should be understood through the lens of a binomial model, grounded on two main figures: vagabonds and tourists. The postmodern society is structured on an extreme social inequality expressed in the bipolar division between two classes: tourists and vagabonds. Each one is determined by a different degree of freedom of choice, which seems to be the cornerstone of postmodern life. The more freedom of choice each class showed the higher its rank in the postmodern social hierarchy. The chapter discusses the weaknesses and strengths in Bauman's reasoning.

Specialists of all pundits and ideologies held the thesis that tourism safety and security is a cornerstone for the evolution and development of tourism. Tourists very well occupy a central position in the engineering of the tourist system. For decades, the discipline was influenced by what experts dubbed as the bubble model which means that tourists should be physically isolated from the interaction with local people. This happens because local people tend to attack or harm high-purchasing power tourists. Some studies have overtly alerted on the risks of enclave tourism for the local economy and society. At the end of the 20th century, this paradigm set the pace for other theories that focused mainly on terrorism, political violence, and local crime. Even Embassies report to their citizens alerting them on what are the safe and unsafe zones to be visited or avoided. Having said this, the literature is not contemplating a new global phenomenon mainly marked by homeless people and their contact with tourist zones. Some works allude to the term homeless tours to denote the complex relationships between foreign tourists, the local government, and homeless young people. This chapter fills the gap while discussing in depth this slippery matter.

The recent COVID-19 virus outbreak, as well as many other global risks, has put the tourism industry on the brink of collapse. Even if interesting advances have been seen the light of publicity based on risk perception, no less true seems to be that the current theory is not enough to understand and describe the impacts of new global risks that may destroy the industry in question of weeks. This introductory chapter gives a snapshot on the fragile conditions we are moving today and interrogates further the future of tourism.

Since it was adopted from psychology just after the turn of twentieth century, risk perception theory has multiplied and successfully evolved in the fields of tourism research. A dearth of studies has focused on risk perception over the recent decades. We have certainly identified three clear-cut traditions: demographical school, psychological school and critical perspective. With benefits and problems each theory has shed light trying to measure the impact of global risks in the tourism and hospitality industries.

This book keeps the originality to update what has been published in the earlier decades. We are incorporating new topics to the discussion as well as new epistemologies and methodologies. Gathering different high-quality products authored by well-renowned authors coming from different countries, it lays the foundations to a new understanding of risk perception and tourism safety-security debating the next steps and the real challenges posed on the industry in a not so long near future.

This paper aims to revolve around two problems which, though imagined as different, can be addressed altogether. On one hand, the advance of terrorism as a major threat to the tourism industry, while – on the other – we discuss the ontological nature of tourism as a rite of passage, which is vital to keep the political legitimacy of officialdom. At the time, paradoxically, social scientists shrug off tourism as a naïve commercial activity, while the main tourist destinations are being attacked by jihadism. This suggests the disinterest of ones associates to the interests of others.

The author holds the thesis that tourism derives from ancient institutions, which illuminated in the growth of Occident and the formation of hospitality. Capitalism hides the importance of tourism as a mere trivialization as a bit-player. However, a closer look reminds precisely the opposite. The recent attacks perpetrated at main destinations reveal tourism as an exemplary (symbolic) center of the West, a source of authority and power for the existing hierarchal order.

The issue captivates the attention of scholars, officials and policymakers, and at the same time, epistemologists of tourism receive a fresh novel debate regarding the origins of tourism.

It is a great paradox that tourism would be selected as a target for jihadism but at the same time a naïve activity for social scientists or at the least by the French tradition. Despite the partisan criticism exerted on tourism as an alienatory force, this work showed two important aspects, which merits to be discussed. At a closer look, tourism should be understood as “a rite of passage” whose function associates to the revitalization of those glitches happened during the cycles of production. Second, and most important, tourism accommodates those frustrations to prevent acts of separatism or the rise of extreme conflict among classes.

Over decades, tourism has been over-valorized as a mechanism that leaves developing economies from poverty and pauperism. In fact, development theory has enthusiastically emphasized the nature of tourism as a sustainable activity that boosts local economies. Quite aside from this, some critical voices not only have questioned to what extent tourism alleviates local poverty but also the connection between tourism and poverty. An emerging field within tourism studies has plausibly discussed the conditions laying for poverty to become a commodity or a tourist attraction. In this context, the classic paradigm of tourism development has been radically shifted. There is a type of emerging morbid consumption (morbid taste) that makes the Other's pain a question of attraction. This chapter not only ignites a hot debate revolving around the nature of poverty tourism but also its main contradictions. These contradictions can be very well begged in a question: if we start from the premise poverty seems to be the main commodity to exchange for local culture, how can the industry of tourism eradicate poverty?