Dark Tourism in the EU: Are We Aware of Taking Part in It?

Abstract

Dark tourism attractions and sites are gaining increasing attention, whereas dark tourism is considered one of the relatively recent and growing trends in the turbulent tourism market. Along with providing a theoretical framework, this paper aims to explore the tourism market of dark tourism and the motives of tourist demand. The perspectives of the population of the Republic of Croatia on dark tourism as a concept as well as the offer side of dark tourism are presented. These findings will be useful in designing and improving this kind of tourist offer, which also represents the main purpose of this paper. The research instrument was an original questionnaire. The main hypothesis of research refers to insufficient tourists’ awareness of their participation in dark tourism, which was confirmed by the carried research. The new frontier of research refers to their propensity of visit in case they would be aware of the tragic history related to a site; namely if they knew a site they visited previously is classified as a dark tourism site – would they still have chosen to visit it?