In a recent trend, dark tourism visitation is seen as a new niche of tourism attrac- tion. Tourists have begun to look into a different dimension of touristic satisfaction
and redefi ned the typical tourism experience. The concepts of dark tourism niche are drawing particular attention to a dark tourism site as an alternative way to enhance
tourist destination toward a specifi c areacountry. Visitors seem to be interested to visit sites where disaster, mass death, and horrifying events took place in the past.
The appetite for this type of visitation interest came from people’s fear of death, fear of torture and suffering, and fear of being killed. The reason why it still captivates
the curiosity of certain people still remains a wide open topic for discussion. There is countless studies on the subject of dark tourism and its association to mass death,
suffering as a form in tourism and hospitality fi elds. The term dark tourism was coined in the 1990s by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley. It describes the increas-
ingly popular tourist practice of visiting sites associated with themes of death, dying, and atrocity Lennon and Foley
1999 . Various other terms such as “thanatourism”
Rojek 1993
, “black spot” tourism Beech 2000
, and “atrocity” Merriam-Webster 2014
are used less frequently to describe the same phenomenon. More research focusing on the barrier development for dark tourism site attrac-
tion is still widely needed as most of the research is focusing on the motivation of visitation and few researches are available to study on the barrier of this type of visi-
tation. It is vital to understand the motivation of this visitation in order to know the issues that contradict to the local community’s beliefs and fi lter their administration
acceptance toward the development of dark tourism. Tourism attraction develop- ment is commonly perfected with good promotion of various cultural and historical
values for tourism. If dark tourism is to be developed, parties involved need to care- fully understand the local community customs, belief, and culture and whether such
niche of tourism development is accepted or not. While tourists may see a dark tourism site as an attempt for them to relate with death and desire to experience
something that may not be morally right, the local community will react by their traditional context of religion and culture. However, this may not be same for the
local community from a different ethnicity and country, for some may react openly positively, while others perceive it as negatively taboo. The objective of this study is
to discuss the acceptance of dark tourism in Southeast Asia with a particular focus on the Sandakan–Ranau Death March. This will provide contextual fi ndings and
hopeful benefi cial as a background framework for future research to providing more concrete and statistical data.
8.2 Background
8.2.1 Previous Studies on Dark Tourism
Dark tourism, and more specifi cally, genocide tourism, is defi ned as a travel to areas associated with death and suffering where mass deliberate and systematic destruc-
tion of a racial, political, or cultural group has occurred Stone 2006a
. Stone also
balitrulyyahoo.com
mentions that there are many types of dark or macabre tourisms ranging from graveyards, celebrity death sites, fi ctional deaths, prisons, slavery heritage areas,
and holocaust and genocide sites. Dr Stone, however, argues that the phenomenon of dark tourism has a long history, suggesting that medieval executions were an
early form of dark tourism, and the practice has continued to the present day Stone
2006b . Nowadays, the exhibition of photography, sculpture, video, and
more substitutes the public witnessing of such murder, execution, and suffering. Genov agrees that dark tourism involves tourists who visit the sites of previous
wars and battles, which were revived at the scene of past violence, and their tour guides cite the examples of heroism, tragedy, and personal suffering Genov
2008 .
This occurs through the use of standard museological features such as the heavy dependence on the photography of atrocity. Sontag
2003 , Griffi th
2006 , and
Kleinman and Kleinman 1997
each provides a commentary on how the photogra- phy of victims produces additional distance between the victim and spectator while
simultaneously objectifying the victim. Zelizer suggests that photographs, particu- larly of genocide and its victims, have attained an iconic status where more recent
photographs mimic those of past events Zelizer 1998
. Lennon and Foley refi ne the defi nition of dark tourism on their book titled Dark
Tourism : The Attraction of Death and Disaster , further noting what actions do and
do not constitute dark tourism. The act of friends and family visiting sites of dark tourism is not categorized as dark tourism. Conversely, “It is those who visit due to
serendipity, the itinerary of tourism companies, or the merely curious who happen to be in the vicinity that are, for us, the basis of dark tourism.” For the authors, it
appears tourist motivations play an almost inconsequential role in dark tourism. However, in the aforementioned article, they do concede that motivations may play
some role in the dark tourism experience. They quote, “These visitors may have been motivated to undertake a visit by a desire to experience the reality behind the
media images andor personal association with inhumanity” Foley and Lennon
1996 . Also discussed is that people are often thrilled and excited with new unpre-
dictable attractions; in this case the idea of seeing something one does not see every- day fulfi lls the thrill seekers Mayo and Jarvis
1981 . A new destination should also
offer uncertainty and complexity in order to be able to arouse a high adventure profi le Wahlers and Etzel
1985 . In this modern urban age we live in, escape from
boredom can often generate the inner child in us that wants to explore by selecting novel experiences Nunnally and Leonard
1973 . Repetition increases boredom,
while novelty increases curiosity.
8.2.2 Southeast Asia and Its Context of Dark Tourism
