Shadows of the past: an insight into dark tourism through online reviews and experiences

This study examines how tourist motivations and perceptions are reflected through online reviews, an underexplored source in dark tourism research. Using text mining techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation and sentiment analysis, it analyzes reviews from significant dark tourism sites, including Chernobyl, Hiroshima, and the 9/11 Memorial. The objective is to understand the alignment between tourist perceptions and the marketing strategies used by these sites, with a focus on four core themes: historical importance, emotional impact, visitor experience, and educational value. Findings reveal a complex interplay among these themes, shedding light on the nuanced motivations, attitudes, and expectations of visitors. By utilizing spontaneously shared online narratives, the study captures dimensions of dark tourism potentially overlooked by traditional surveys, thereby offering fresh insights into how visitor perceptions are formed and expressed. This research extends existing knowledge on dark tourism experiences and underscores the value of large-scale text-based analysis for understanding evolving relationships between tourists and sites associated with death or suffering. The results can guide site managers in designing visitor experiences that respect historical and emotional significance while meeting visitors' informational and experiential needs.