Project Description
This research investigates the concept of dark tourism as a distinct type of tourism, and describes why Vught can be seen as a potential dark tourism destination. Destination branding managers can turn Vught into a dark tourism destination by maximizing Vught‟s available inherited resources and transform them into unique competitive advantages. This may require a dark tourism destination branding campaign. However, a campaign that brings forward the dark tourism site reputation of Vught for destination branding purposes may lead to a conflict. By means of semi-structured in-depth interviews, this research reveals what the attitudes of Vught’s residents are on a fictive campaign that highlights Vught’s historic events, and to what extent they would like to be involved in a fictive destination branding campaign. This research provides a better insight on what the attitudes of residents are on bringing forward the dark tourism site reputation of their hometown. Results reveal that according to the participants, Vught can make use of its dark tourism historic events for destination branding purposes, including the events of Second World War, but this has to be handled with caution. In addition, the inhabitants of Vught rather want to use positive aspects of Vught for a destination branding campaign in order to welcome more visitors, instead of using Vught’s dark site tourism reputation for destination branding purposes.
Author: Kloeg, L. (2014)
