Tourism in the Days of Morbid Consumption

Abstract

This chapter centers on the changes, limitations and future challenges tourism research faces in the years to come. In the days of morbid consumption, which means the proliferation of new dark forms of consumption as dark tourism, slum tourism, last day tourism or even war-tourism, scholars seem to be misguided or trapped into conceptual gridlocks. In fact, our grandparents chose other types of destinations for their holidays. Instead, new forms of tourism—more oriented to spaces of destruction, mass death and suffering—are surfacing. This chapter, echoing the main contributions of Dean MacCannell, calls for the introduction of ethics in business. This begs the following question: to what extent is dark tourism or last day tourism a sustainable activity?