Is dark tourism non-ethical or very educational?
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00:00 The Oxford Dictionary defines dark tourism as tourism that involves travelling to places
00:06 associated with death and suffering. In recent times, the popularisation of tourists travelling
00:11 to dark tourism hotspots has increased. But what kind of places fall under this umbrella
00:17 term? Well, the London Dungeons are classed as a dark tourism spot, but so is Chernobyl,
00:23 the Auschwitz concentration camp, the 9/11 memorial and Hiroshima, which was largely
00:27 destroyed by an atomic bomb in World War II. With the rise in visiting numbers to these
00:32 areas, ethics is called into question. Could dark tourism run the risk of reducing areas
00:37 of historic tragedy to Instagram opportunities, or is it important to seek what education
00:43 these areas have to offer? Some academics argue that dark tourism itself is not non-ethical,
00:49 but rather how people can choose to conduct themselves in these areas is what can pose
00:53 as a sensitivity issue. Yet, those against dark tourism argue that sites of death should
00:58 not be commodified. Well, what do you think? Let's take a look at some of the views on
01:02 this subject from the people in our region.