Pop-Culture Tourism

Pop-culture tourism, unlike some types of travel, is by definition, harmless fun. Simply put, it involves destinations with indelible connections to popular books, films, television shows, music, major events or a particular celebrity.

Slum Tourism

One of the most controversial types of travel involves tours of vast urban slums in places like Rio de Janeiro, Soweto, Mumbai, Manila, Cairo and Mexico City. “Shanty tourism” or “poverty tourism” is certifiably questionable and on the ethical borderline when the experience is utterly passive. If however, visitors engage in some kind of community outreach or volunteer program, the collective positive impact falls beyond the realm of mere “slum tourism”.

Ghost Tourism

A fascination with the supernatural drives some people to travel in search of the paranormal. Behind many a famous landmark is a great ghost story and indeed, popular tours in places like Dublin, St. Augustine, Florida, Quebec City and Brisbane explore historic, “haunted” city quarters.

Dark tourism

Dark tourism (also black tourism or grief tourism) is tourism involving travel to sites associated with death and tragedy. Thanatourism,derived from the Ancient Greek word thanatos for the personification of death, is associated with dark tourism but refers more specifically to violent death; it is used in fewer contexts than the terms dark tourism and grief tourism. The main draw however to these locations is mostly due to their historical value rather than their associations with death and sufferingThe name is self-explanatory but to expound further, dark tourism is travel to some of the most somber and grim historical points of interest on the planet. Think sites of unspeakable horror, like the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in Poland, Khmer Rouge “Killing Fields” of Cambodia and Robben Island off the Cape Town coast.

Disaster Tourism

“Disaster Tourism” is somewhat of a paradox. In the name of self-preservation after all, most people flee from natural disasters. Disaster tourism is the act of traveling to a disaster area as a matter of curiosity. The behavior can be a nuisance if it hinders rescue, relief, and recovery operation A slim, intrepid minority however, prefer to fling themselves in the eye of the storm, as it were, or show up to observe the aftermath. Less aid workers and more storm chasers, these adrenaline fiends just like to watch.