‘Dark tourism’ — good, bad, or downright problematic?

From Chornobyl to Fukushima, the world is full of destinations with dark pasts (Picture: Shutterstock / Fotokon)

In 2018, journalist David Farrier fronted a Netflix show called Dark Tourist, which saw him visit places that wouldn’t be on most people’s bucket lists.

There was a Japanese nuclear disaster site, an exorcism in Mexico, and a space station in a former Soviet ‘Stan.

Why, you ask? Because they’re all examples of ‘dark tourism,’ an increasingly popular travel niche that involves visiting destinations historically associated with death, disaster, or the macabre.

While the series made the trend mainstream, the term was actually coined in 1996 by academics J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley to describe growing interest in examining the past.

Opinions on dark tourism have long been divided, with critics calling it unethical and, at times, unsafe.

Others wonder: if you go somewhere for its historical value, isn’t it just good old-fashioned, regular tourism?

We speak to the experts to learn more.

Dark tourism — is it ethical?

The loudest criticism of dark tourism is that it blurs the line between respectful remembrance and exploiting human tragedy.

Political scientist Daniel Schatz doesn’t like the term to begin with. But he does enjoy visiting destinations that fall into the bracket.

Schatz, who has spent much of his scholarly and public work examining dictatorships, political repression, and authoritarian propaganda, tells Metro that while the travel trend can be ethical, it’s ‘never ethically neutral.’

Tourism is tightly choreographed in countries like North Korea; therefore, tourists can never truly understand what life is like there (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)

‘The central question is whether a visit fosters serious historical and political understanding, or if it turns suffering and repression into spectacle,’ he says.

To Schatz, that distinction matters, especially in authoritarian states.

In North Korea, for example, he explains that tourism is tightly choreographed: visitors are shown a regime-approved version of reality.

Meanwhile, Donald Leka, founder of InAlb, a tour operator in the Albanian capital Tirana, takes around 1,000 tourists through Albania and the Balkans every year, most of them from the UK.

He says nearly all visit at least one site from the country’s communist past.

During Albania’s communist era, thousands of bunkers were built. They now show what life was like at that time (Picture: Shutterstock / BrittanyO)

This includes Bunk’Art 1, a five-floor nuclear bunker outside Tirana, and Bunk’Art 2, the former Interior Ministry bunker, now a museum of the Sigurimi secret police.

Leka tells Metro that his tours educate travellers on Albania’s communist past, where thousands were killed, imprisoned or sent to internment camps.

Ethically, he thinks the line isn’t whether you visit, but how you are guided.

‘We brief our guides on survivor families, and we treat these as memorial sites, not attractions,’ he explains.

‘A good guide makes it history. A bad one makes it a photo stop.’

Where does ‘dark tourism’ end and history start?

Schatz is sceptical of the ‘dark tourism’ label when it’s applied too broadly.

For example, visiting Auschwitz, a battlefield, or a former dictatorship for historical and educational reasons is not necessarily dark tourism.

‘It can be an act of memory, civic education, and moral seriousness,’ he says. ‘The crucial issue is the purpose of the visit and whether it treats victims and history with dignity.’

To Leka, the label ‘dark tourism’ does not accurately describe his line of work.

‘Nobody books Albania to tour the dark. They book it to understand the country, and you cannot understand Albania without its 45+ years of communism,’ he says.

Canadian traveller Alicia Recupero, who recently returned from a tour of Albania with Leka’s company, agrees.

‘I knew Albania had lived through decades of communist dictatorship. Our guide Ergi told us it was considered the most brutal dictatorship in Europe, and I knew the country had been isolated from much of the world,’ she tells Metro.

‘But I didn’t understand what that actually meant for ordinary people until I walked through those cold, underground corridors.’

She learned about Spaç, the notorious political prison where people endured forced labour in terrible conditions.

‘What I found impossible to comprehend was how little it could take to become an enemy of the state,’ she says.

‘Imagine coming home after a long day, sitting down for dinner and casually saying, “There wasn’t enough bread today in line today”.’ (Food was rationed by the communist regime from 1946 until 1991).

‘Something so ordinary any of us might say without thinking twice. Yet under that system, even a complaint about daily life could be interpreted as criticism of the government, with devastating consequences.’

As a Canadian, Recupero says she’s grown up taking certain freedoms for granted.

‘Inside that bunker, I realised how extraordinary those ordinary freedoms really are.’

That’s not dark tourism, she says. It’s history.

YouTuber Luke Bradburn regularly visits abandoned locations, many of which have safety concerns (Picture: Luke Bradburn / SWNS)

What about safety?

Safety depends entirely on the location and nature of the visit.

Regulated historical sites, such as Albania’s bunkers, are built for tourists. They have staff, crowd control, and strict security protocols.

Rock up somewhere else, such as remote or abandoned locations, and it’s a different story.

Around two hours from Tokyo is Western Village, an abandoned theme park and urban explorer’s dream. Here, lack of regulation could pose serious risks, like collapsing roofs or limited emergency access.

Similarly, environmental and radiation hazards are very real in disaster zones like Chornobyl or Fukushima—especially if you don’t join a legitimate tour and enter dangerous ‘exclusion zones’ without protection.

There’s also the dark tourists who venture to active conflict zones or unstable borders.

Schatz adds that safety shouldn’t be reduced to whether tourists are likely to be physically harmed.

In a dictatorship, for example, ‘visitors operate under arbitrary rules, pervasive surveillance, and virtually no meaningful legal protection if something goes wrong.’

Money talk

Fans believe the trend can be beneficial to locals who would otherwise miss out on tourist spending.

‘Spaç is a mountain village with a prison and almost nothing else,’ Leka says. ‘

Every tour that stops there spends money in a place with no beach, no castle and no other reason to go.’

Then there’s Chornobyl.

Chornobyl has long sparked an ethical debate about whether tourists should be able to visit (Picture: Shutterstock / Tomasz Jocz)

While the site continues to spark ethical debates, especially from disaster-survivor groups who condemn tourists for treating it as an adventure playground or selfie backdrop, there’s no denying it’s brought financial and economic benefits to Ukraine.

Between 2017 and 2020, the Exclusion Zone experienced an unprecedented economic boom, generating approximately £15.5 million.

It’s thought this surge was largely driven by the success of the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl, and before COVID and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Ultimately, it seems that dark tourism is subjective—whether that be in terms of the destination, the travellers’ perspective, or the company operating tours and trips.

Comments Add as preferred source