Disaster Tourism

In one of my previous posts I’ve briefly mentioned the term “Disaster Tourism”. So what is Disaster Tourism? How does a country receive money from such kind of tourism? Is it moral to capitalize on other people’s suffering? That is the topic of today’s discussion.

To get the whole conception of this trend, it is necessary to start from the top. The term “Dark Tourism” refers to the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as a main theme. People might be a dark tourist even without realizing it. There are several kinds of dark tourism; however, at least 2 of them are getting more and more popular. Grief Tourism is travelling somewhere to visit a scene of some tragic event. The most common examples of grief tourism are war-related, like visiting the concentration camps and battle sites, seeing cemeteries, and tourists coming to see where tragic crimes or events happened. One of the example of grief tourism is the wave of visitors to Ground Zero in New York after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Here is an entire web site which is dedicated to grief tourism.

Another type of Dark Tourism is Disaster Tourism. There is a close connection to a grief tourism; however, Disaster Tourism deserves its own category after getting so much attention in the last years. Some people desire to visit a natural disaster zone that we’ve seen plastered across TV screens. A good example, which reflects Disaster Tourism Trent, is an earthquake in Sichuan province, China.

On May 12, 2008, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan Province, killing about 70,000 people and leaving over 18,000 missing. The disaster had naturally caused huge public interest. Especially sad was the information about thousands of kids and students who died in schools. The recovery plan for the destination includes opening some quake relics and museums to tourists; among them are a memorial in Yingxiu, a museum of quake ruins in Beichuan and a “quake lake” at Tangjiashan. The general goal of the reconstruction plan is to create a world-class earthquake relic site.

Related to the concept of Disaster Tourism, travelers come to Sichuan to visit the ruins from the quake. A year after the catastrophe, the business of earthquake tourism is booming.

“There is a huge tourism market in the ruins one year after the quake. Lots of people have been coming to visit the quake zone, especially during the Spring Festival, the Tomb-sweeping Festival and the May Day holiday,” said Wu Mian, deputy director of Sichuan Provincial Tourism Department.

Touring the devastated areas may not be the safest nor most sensitive idea, but the demand is undeniable. In late January alone, during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, Sichuan’s tourism bureau estimates that 7 million tourists visited earthquake sites, generating around $263 in revenues.

People argue that income from this kind of tourism would help the region’s economy to recover. However, there is a big question whether it is moral to capitalize on other people’s suffering???