How Hotels can take Advantage of Dark Tourism

Executive Summary

This report aims to investigate how hotels can take advantage of dark tourism activities to generate more revenue. Dark tourism has become increasingly popular in recent years, with more and more people visiting sites associated with death and suffering. However, hotels still have many opportunities to capitalize on this trend. Hotels must take advantage of the popularity of dark tourism activities to attract more customers and generate more revenue. There are many ways hotels can do this, such as partnering with local businesses to offer experiences to tourists or offering services that tourists will need when visiting dark tourism sites. Additionally, given that many dark tourism sites are located in isolated areas, hotels can provide transportation and other services to tourists that will help increase their profit margins. While there is some competition in the hotel industry regarding dark tourism, there are still many opportunities for hotels to differentiate themselves and attract more business. By offering unique experiences and services, hotels can set themselves apart from the competition and ensure that they can generate more revenue from dark tourism activities. 

1.0 Three Non-Traditional or "Dark" Tourism Activities That Can be Leveraged by Hotels to Generate Profit

For many years, the tourism and hospitality industry has been a source of revenue for many countries due to its diverse and vibrant economic activities. Tourism is considered one of the important sources of income for the hotel industry. Although dark tourism is not so new, it has become very popular over the last few years, making the hotel industry get more customers, thus increasing its profits. From a definition point of view, dark tourism is the act where tourists travel to the site of tragedy, death, and suffering with the aim of experiencing what happened. Because of the nature of these sites, they are considered a subset of cultural tourism (Bordun & Komar, 2015). At the level of experience, however, dark tourism plays a wide role as a tourist site, providing tourists with unique cultural moments as they visit monuments and museums documenting real or fictional deaths and disasters. The increasing popularity of dark tourism activities makes them unique sites that hotels can leverage to generate more profits. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss dark tourism activities that hotels can leverage to generate more profits.

1.1 Dark Tourism Activities that can be Leveraged by Hotels to Generate Profit

The hospitality industry, in most instances, depends on tourists as their source of income. This means the increased tourism activities in the area make the hotels generate more Profit. It is significant that tourists continuously search for new trends and a variety of adrenaline rush experiences in the current world. Given that tourists are currently attracted by unique features such as museums, hotels must leverage dark tourism activities to ensure they make more revenues. From the analysis, it is clear that tourists in the current world have been traveling to places related to suffering, disasters, and death to satisfy their curiosity and fascination (Jamin et al., 2020). One of the dark tourism activities that have been attractive sites for tourists is museums. In the past years, tourists have been visiting museums in the United States and worldwide to learn and view what existed before to learn how different things came into existence. Using the opportunity that these dark activities offer, hotels can increase their market revenue. It is important for the hotels to leverage the dark tourism activities because it will help them get more consumers, which will help to have positive profitability. For instance, custom packages for DT help increase the demand for museums, increasing the tourism economy (Tourism, 2022). This indicates that you can take advantage of increased DT activities in the hotel industry by ensuring that those tourists are provided with effective services such as tour guides, as that will help generate more resources from the activities. It is clear that dark tourism activities like visiting museums help promote local arts and crafts, which is vital because it helps create job opportunities and even increase socialization among people. Therefore, considering the opportunities created by the DT activities for the community and economy, hotels can use them to increase their services, thus generating more revenue.

From the analysis of different scholars, it is significant that DT has stood out as one of the most attractive tourist choices. For instance, in the current world, the tourist has increased their visits to places where victims died, this has been having helped them to learn the importance of having a peaceful nation that embraces peace. It is significant that as these sites become more attractive destinations for the tourists, hotels can use increased creation of opportunities to increase their revenue (Research, 2022). Given the high number of tourists visiting dark tourist sites such as places where victims died, hotels can come up with an important strategy that will help them leverage opportunities provided by the activities of DT to register positive income. Also, given that the DT sites are located in different places in most instances, hotels have the opportunity to come up with programs that will make their services attractive to tourists. With advanced technology, hotels should enhance a touring program that will offer access to tourists who visit these sites. Having this program will make the hospitality industry increase its customers and even revenue. It is vital to say that dark tourism activities contribute sufficient benefits to the hotels because they help improve the local community's economy and knowledge (Sampson, 2019). Further, DT sites attract more people annually, indicating that hotels can use that opportunity to enhance programs that will offer services to the people, such as free food delivery and transportation, which will increase their income. From research by different scholars, it has been indicated that most people who visit dark tourism sites aim to learn the historical background of the places, something that is vital to both the country and the tourist. This means that hotels can leverage those opportunities by offering centers that offer education to the visitors, making them create more revenue sources.

 It is also important that hotels take advantage of DT activities to promote their service and partner with local businesses to offer experiences to the tourists who visit DT sites. For many years, the dark tourism activities have attracted more travelers globally, something that, if the hotels take the opportunity, can make more profits. The popularity of DT activities has increased in the current error because of its alignment across generations (Lewis, Schrier & Xu, 2021). Even though dark tourism sites have been attracting millions of tourists across the globe, there have not been well built, thus making it difficult for the people who visit them to have enough time to stay at these places. Due to this reason, hotels can take the opportunities of numerous people who visit these places to attract more customers by offering them affordable services such as tour guides and food to increase their income generation (Weidenfeld, 2018). Additionally, dark tourism activities like people visiting Necrotourism have gained popularity in recent years, allowing the hotels to increase the number of consumers (Dzurov et al., 2020). It is also evident from the research that advancement in technology is one of the signs that has increased the number of dark tourism activities. Through the internet, people have been able to visit different areas of the world. From this view, hotels must embrace technology to ensure that they can inform more people who wish to visit dark sites about the services that will help generate more revenue.

1.2 Conclusion

In conclusion, from the research, it is true that dark tourism sites have been in the recent past attracting the highest number of tourists thus, hotels can use it to generate more Profit. It has also been indicated that the hotel industry has been transforming throughout the years, indicating that it can use the advantage of some dark tourism activities to increase its Profit. Also, the increased competition in the hotel industry indicates that hotels can leverage dark tourism activities to maintain their market value and profitability. The rise in social networks is one of the signs that have helped to bring dark tourism to light today thus, it is easier for hotels to take advantage of technology to ensure that they offer services to tourists who visit dark tourism activities (Hospitality, 2022). For instance, given that some of the dark tourism activities take place in the isolated parts like a museum, the hotels can offer to provide services that the tourist will need and that will make it to increase their profit generation. Therefore, looking at the available opportunities that dark tourism activities have, it is significant that hotels can take that advantage to increase their revenue collection because the current hospitality industry is in great competition. 

References

Bordun, O., & Komar, R. (2015). Current state and prospects of dark tourism flows organization in Ukraine. Current Issues of Tourism Research, 4(2), 4-12.

Dzurov Vargová, T., Gallo, P., Švedová, M., Litavcová, E., & Košíková, M. (2020). Non-Traditional Forms of Tourism in Slovakia as a Concept of Competitiveness. GeoJournal of Tourism and Geosites, 30 (2sppl), 801-807.

Hospitality On. (2022, March 17). Dark tourism: Harder, better, faster, darker. Hospitality    ON. Retrieved April 29, 2022, from https://hospitality-on.com/en/tourism/dark-tourism-harder-better-faster-darker

Jamin, A., Zain, Z. M., Sakarji, S. R., Ahmad, N., & Beta, R. M. D. M. (2020). The Benefits of Dark Tourism Experience among Visitors in Malaysia. KnE Social Sciences, 219-228.

Lewis, H., Schrier, T., & Xu, S. (2021). Dark tourism: motivations and visit intentions of tourists. International Hospitality Review.

Research, G. D. T. (2022, April 25). Impact of terrorism and conflicts on travel and Tourism Industry: Niche Trends. Hotel Management Network. Retrieved April 29, 2022, from https://www.hotelmanagement-network.com/comment/impact-of-terrorism-and-conflicts-on-travel-and-tourism-industry-niche-trend

Sampson, H. (2019, November 13). Dark tourism, explained: Why visitors flock to sites of tragedy. The Washington Post. Retrieved May 13, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com

Tourism, G. T. (2022, March 31). Increasingly popular dark tourism attractions must confront dilemmas. Hotel Management Network. Retrieved May 13, 2022, from https://www.hotelmanagement-network.com/comment/popular-dark-tourism-attractions

Weidenfeld, A. (2018). Tourism diversification and its implications for smart specialization. Sustainability, 10(2), 319. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322777358_Tourism_Diversification_and_Its_Implications_for_Smart_Specialisation