Dark tourism: The need for a critical approach

The power wielded by the tourism industry, and its increasing global reach and economic power in recent decades has produced ambivalent and contradictory outcomes. This has generated new opportunities and tourism niches but also important critical reflections on how tourism changes and influences the places and communities where it is embedded, especially in times of ecological and sociopolitical instability (see for example Gibson, 2021; Morgan et al., 2018; Timothy, 2022). It has also shed light on how tourism can be utilized to critically approach pressing issues in our times, such as climate change (Kajan & Saarinen, 2013; Scott, 2011), ethics and morality (Caton, 2011; Fennell, 2018), postcoloniality (Carrigan, 2014), eurocentrism and nonwestern perspectives (Chang, 2015), feminism (Cole, 2018; Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2015; Pritchard, 2014), as well as broader processes of globalization, commodification, and the economic and political underpinnings of leisure and recreative activities (Ateljevic, 2011; Bianchi, 2018; Bramwell, 2011; Cole, 2012; Duffy, 2013; Timothy, 2019).