Dark tourism, thanatourism, and dissonance in heritage tourism management: new directions in contemporary tourism research

This research note focuses on tourism to heritage sites with a controversial history and sites associated with death, disaster, and the macabre. Several new concepts and research directions have emerged in the study of such sites. Particular attention is given to the dark tourism and thanatourism approaches as well as to an analysis of dissonance in the management of heritage sites. Further, changes at places with a shadowed past are examined in the context of a revived geography of memory. There is a continued interest of the traveling public in revisiting war and peace memorials. In the final part of the research note examples of a new perspective on places of pain and shame are introduced.