Tag: Dark Tourism
The Titanic Memorial Cruise: Tasteless or Touching?
by Michael Yessis | 10.07.09 | 3:43 PM ET
Miles Morgan Travel, the company behind the Titanic Memorial Cruise, tells Reuters it has “come in for a little bit of criticism,” but stresses the upcoming trip is meant to be “a commemoration not a ghoulish recreation of the original journey.”
It may or may not be ghoulish, but it is a recreation. The cruise will depart Southampton, England on April 8, 2012, 100 years to the day after the original Titanic’s departure. On April 12, 2012, it will stop at the exact spot Titanic sank.
“I’ve had several people in tears on the phone,” Miles Morgan said. “I was reading the itinerary to one woman and she literally broke down.”
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Yahoo! BuzzSchott’s Vocab on ‘Grief Tourism’
by Michael Yessis | 07.31.09 | 9:36 AM ET
The New York Times blog of modern words and phrases picks up on grief tourism. It defines it as: “Traveling to the memorial services or home towns of those who have died, in order to pay one’s respects—despite having no personal connection with the deceased.” It’s an offshoot of dark tourism, which Frank Bures examined for World Hum a couple years ago.
Dead American Poets: The Grand Tour
by Eva Holland | 07.27.09 | 2:04 PM ET
Walter Skold has found a novel use for his summer vacation: traveling around the U.S. in search of the graves of poets, and tracking his efforts in a photo blog. The Book Bench offers a quick review: “There’s little in the way of written musings, but the photos do a lot of talking. Dorothy Parker’s gravestone, reflecting the glare of a harsh flash, reads: ‘For her epitaph, she suggested: ‘Excuse my Dust.’’”
Risky Business: Playing the Numbers Game
by Eric Weiner | 03.27.09 | 9:49 AM ET
REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani On the intersection of place, politics and culture
Asia’s Disaster Tourism Over the Line?
by Julia Ross | 03.05.09 | 5:27 PM ET
As we noted yesterday, two new disaster-themed tourist sites are set to open in Asia this month: a museum to commemorate the 2004 tsunami that leveled Indonesia’s Aceh province, and previously off-limits ruins and a museum related to the May 2008 earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. We can debate the pros (local economic development) and cons (unwelcome voyeurism) of disaster tourism, but the descriptions of these two new sites seem to me to cross a line.
Of the tsunami museum, the BBC reports, “Inside, visitors enter through a dark, narrow corridor between two high walls of water—meant to recreate the noise and panic of the tsunami itself.”
At the Sichuan earthquake sites, AFP reports, “Tour groups will be able to go boating on a ‘quake lake’ and visit a museum featuring an ‘earthquake simulation.’”
There’s a fun house aspect to this that I don’t like at all. It’s one thing to establish a museum to educate the public on a disaster’s impact and pay homage to lives lost, but to make the experience entertaining? It’s just plain inappropriate.
When I visited New York’s Ground Zero about four months after 9/11, I found staring into the gaping hole in lower Manhattan unforgettable enough. No simulations needed.
Come Back to Chengdu
by Julia Ross | 02.10.09 | 4:42 PM ET
I’ve never been much for Mandarin pop music—the word saccharine immediately leaps to mind—but if it succeeds in bringing tourism back to China’s earthquake-riven Sichuan Province, it can’t be all bad. Chinese pop star Jane Zhang, who gained fame as a contestant on China’s version of American Idol, recently lent her talents to a theme song and music video (below) to promote local tourism in provincial capital Chengdu. The lyrics aren’t exactly imaginative—“I Love This City,” goes the English chorus—but in my experience, this kind of pop ballad has a bottomless fan base in China, so it just might work.
National Public Radio recently reported on the rise of “earthquake tourism” in Sichuan, among those who want to gape at the devastation wrought by the May 2008 temblor, but the video is clearly designed to remind people why they loved the laid-back Southwestern city in the first place: tea drinking, pandas and hot pot.
In related news, a film titled “Chengdu, I Love You,” is scheduled for production this year, based on a storyline similar to that of “Paris, Je T’aime.” (via Cfensi)
Deadly Ricin Found in Las Vegas Motel Room
by Jim Benning | 02.29.08 | 11:13 AM ET
The discovery was made Thursday at an Extended Stay America Hotel. Seven people, all apparently in good condition, have been sent to hospitals for observation. It puts the whole bedbugs debate into perspective, doesn’t it?
Illuminating ‘Dark Travel’
by Frank Bures | 06.18.07 | 1:45 PM ET
The "Lonely Planet 2007 Blue List" and Adam Russ's "101 Places Not to Visit" spur Frank Bures to contemplate why travelers don't always want to be delivered from inconvenience.
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