English with Melody

Book a Lesson

Dark Tourism

Vocabulary

  • Disaster
  • Concentration camp
  • Genocidal
  • Carriages
  • Nuclear
Auschwitz. Wikipedia.

Article

Many people like to visit places with beautiful views, nice weather, or delicious food. These places make them feel happy. However, some people travel to sad places where bad things happened, like wars or disasters.

For example, Auschwitz in Poland is a concentration camp where about 1 million Jews died during the Holocaust. It has almost 2 million visitors each year. Every day, many people go to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center in Cambodia. This place is part of the Killing Fields, where about 1.4 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. This type of travel is called “dark tourism.”

The term “dark tourism” was created by Malcolm Foley and J. John Lennon. They wrote a book called Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster. Lennon told The Washington Post that dark tourism is not something new. He said people have been interested in dark tourism since events like the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, where people watched the battle from their carriages.

Why do people visit these sad places? Experts say it’s a part of being human.

Lennon explained that these places help us learn about what it means to be human. He thinks they are important for us to think about the bad things that can happen. Philip Stone, who started the Institute for Dark Tourism Research in the UK, said that dark tourism is becoming more popular.

Part of this increase may come from popular TV shows. For example, in 2019, a travel company in Chernobyl, Ukraine, saw a 40% rise in bookings after the HBO series Chernobyl was released. Chernobyl is known for a terrible nuclear accident that happened in 1986.

Summarize the article in your own words.

Speaking

  • What do you think of disaster tourism?
  • Why do you think so many people want to visit these places?
  • Where do you usually go on vacation?
  • Is it important to learn about the history of places you visit?
  • Is your town or city and popular place for tourism?

Writing

  • Where is your favourite place you have visited? Describe what it was like.

Listening

  • Describe what happened in this video. Have you had any bad experiences when travelling?