Even though the concept of dark tourism has been extensively debated for more than 20
years, the field continues to remain insufficiently explored in order to be fully understood. As a
consequence, this master thesis aims to explore a different approach towards dark tourism
context and provide meaningful knowledge for further researches. The study’s main objective is
to investigate tourists’ emotional responses within memorial tourism as a subset of dark tourism
sector and how can those emotions can lead to meaningful tourist experiences.
The case study selected for further research within this project is represented by the
Memorial of the Victims of Communism and of the Resistance from Romania. as a
representative attraction for the dark tourism field.
This master thesis is based on a qualitative research with data collected at the memorial
through interviews and direct participant observation.
The theoretical foundation, as secondary data for this project represents a useful tool for
understanding the main topic and consequently make its contribution to provide an answer for
the main research question. The literature section consists of three sub-sections representing the
three sub-questions of this thesis that are meant to provide insight into the way the attraction is
perceived by the tourists, the main factors that motivate tourists to visit dark locations followed
by visitors’ emotional responses at the memorial.
The findings of this research are revealed based on a similar layout to the theoretical
foundation and they have the purpose of providing knowledge within the dark tourism context.
This research is valuable for the researched memorial in Romania by highlighting both the
weakness and the strengths of the attraction with the main objective of future improvements in
order to comprehend future tourists’ needs.