I saw some young guys being a bit loud, and people started staring at them. As a result, they obviously felt bad. The visitors had their own input into the feel of the place. They said ‘this is how you should feel here, this is not a place to talk loudly or to be happy, you need to be sombre’. A LIGHTER SHADE OF DARKNESS People visit some of these sites because of their dark past. When you go to a concentration camp in Poland, you already know, more or less, what to expect. For other places, that darkness is not necessarily the draw – you can take your kids to the IWM, have a lot of fun. It is down to how the organisations behind these places nudge visitors to feel one way or another. The Tower of London is a good example. People know about the gore, the wives of Henry VIII, and so on. They want to hear these stories, but they are told in such a light way – people were dismembered, but they make it funny. The guides and other staff are all happy and smiling – it all contributes to the overall narrative. The Tower of London has its own agenda, and it might be that these events are all so far away in time that we are no longer affected by it, but they are also following what visitors want. MORE THAN A FEELING Having tourists engage with this narrative on a mental and emotional level is essential to the sites’ success. The role of dark tourism organisations goes beyond entertaining and educating visitors, reaching a more psychologically and emotionally profound level. When we talk about how they prescribe emotions, we know that through certain emotions you learn more or less. For most organisations, they want you to remember your visit one way or another, which is why there is the emotional aspect. How you feel in certain places is what you remember most. I have talked to a lot of people about how they felt at Auschwitz, for example. The emotional aspect, how you feel once you are there and you visit those gas chambers, is something most people will never forget, more than the place itself. There are questions to be raised over the ethics of exploiting both the history and emotions for commercial purposes. But dark tourism sites are here to stay, and each time you visit, they will have a story they want to tell you, and a way they want you to feel about it. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 31 Dr Beatriz Rodriguez Garcia is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Marketing. The article When organisations prescribe emotions: A dark tourism perspective, is co-authored by Dr Beatriz Rodriguez Garcia and Dr Emre Tarim, of Lancaster University Management School. It was presented at the 35th European Group for Organisational Studies Colloquium 2019 in Edinburgh. b.rodriguezgarcia@lancaster.ac.uk
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