I am currently studying Dark Tourism at university. I have to say that I disagree with you having put poverty tourism into the attraction categories of this niche market. This is because poverty is ongoing and therefore a tourist is visiting a site that was established in the past but is still continuing in the present.

Whereas the other types of categories within this niche market like grief, holocaust, disaster, cemetery etc are within the past and contain elements of death!

Dark tourism is either historical (real) or heritage (guardian of history) but who decides which is real? Who decides what attraction’s can be repackaged and sold?

Additionally, you did not mention genealogy tourism, yeah the tourist does this themselves but it leads to the demand of visitations to homelands or cemeteries etc….it could be said that this is a societal motivation but comes across as a cultural gaze.

Also Paul, you should purchase the book by Sharpley and Stone, The Darker Side of Travel. It will help you, it is my lecturer that wrote this book! There’s also a website http://www.dark-tourism.org.uk this should help too =)

I also know there’s a novel coming out in Australia in September 09 called Hollywood Ending which is about two teenagers obsessed with dark tourism. The author’s name is Kathy Charles and she blogs about dark tourism too at http://www.kathycharles.com.

Who organizing this tours ? Are there any travel agency´s specialized in this type of tourism? I am reserching on this subject myself and would be interesting to getmore feedback.