Friday 5 February 2016

Dark tourism for David Bowie

Dark tourism seems to be a way of tourism that is growing vastly among tourists. Due to recent events, this also has become a pretty large part of popular tourism in Groningen.

Dark tourism is a concept that describes a way of tourism that is focused on, for example, death, atrocities, disaster and emotions (Lennon & Foley, 2000; Ryan, 2005; Sharpley & Stone, 2008). This could explain why more and more tourist agencies offer tours to war zones and places of disaster, like Palestine or Ground Zero in New York. Places like this are attractive to many tourists because of the feelings and emotions they bring up.

As you might know from recent events, the multi-talented artist David Bowie passed away on the 10th of January. As you might also know, there is a travelling art exhibition that exhibits all of David Bowies paintings, pieces of art and many of his original clothes and attributes. It just so happened to be that this art exhibition was in Groningen at the time of Bowies death (coincidence?). At the day of Bowies passing, the Groninger Museum was supposed to be closed, as it was a Sunday, but after the news had arrived in Groningen, the museum board decided to open the doors for many grieving fans. After his death, the demand for tickets has rocketed sky-high, so much that the museum has already extended it's opening hours and elongated the exhibition by four weeks to meet the demand.

This is a clear case of dark tourism in Groningen. Chances are that, if Bowie hadn't died, the museum wouldn't have had as much visitors. So many people want to take a look at pieces of the legend that was David Bowie, and even more decided they wanted to do that that after he had died. Pretty dark, right?
David Bowie (RIP) source:detorenbommelerwaard.nl

sources:
Lennon, J. J., & Foley, M. (2000). Dark tourism. London: Continuum

Ryan, C. (2005). Dark tourism: An introduction. In C. Ryan, S. Page & M. Aiken (eds), Taking tourism to the limits: Issues, concepts and managerial perspectives (pp. 187-190). Oxford: Elsevier.
Stone, P., & Sharpley, R. (2008). Consuming dark tourism: A thanatological perspective. Annals of Tourism Research, 35 (2), 574–595. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.02.003

http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4512/Cultuur/article/detail/4224467/2016/01/14/Groninger-Museum-kan-extra-toeloop-Bowiefans-prima-aan.dhtml

http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/01/28/david-bowie-is-langer-in-groninger-museum

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