Dark Tourism Attractiveness Scan Model

Death has always fascinated humans, perhaps because the fear of not being able to avoid it is as great as the desire to know what comes next. Driven by an innate awareness of one's deadly nature, people have always visited sites impregnated with suffering, pain, violence, and atrocity. Although the act of travelling to these destinations has always existed, there is still a gap in the literature concerning the knowledge of this new form of tourism and the lack of an effective methodology capable of detecting Dark Tourism destinations as well as to identify potential dark tourism products. Indeed, this thesis aims to fill this academic void through a deepening of theories regarding this new phenomenon so to allow a greater understanding of its origin, evolution and current state and to provide the tourism industry with a methodology, the "Dark Tourism Attractiveness Scan Model" availed of a theoretical but also an empirical basis since it is used in a geographically defined area, the province of Tarragona (Spain), and capable of determining new business potentialities in tourist destinations not yet developed or offering new possibilities for already mature tourist destinations.