Niche Tourism: Concepts And Examples In This Essay.

Dark Tourism at Ground Zero in New York

Discuss about the Developing The Tourism In New York.

Niche tourism refers to special kind of tourism that is based on a specific topic which could be wildlife tourism, dark tourism and film tourism among others (Šuši? & Moji?, 2014. In each of these concepts, traveller will only focus on a single concept in the case of niche tourism. Niche tourism is somehow a new concept in the sector of tourism that seems to be picking momentum as more people get interest in specific topics of tourism (Chen, 2016). The purpose of this report is to establish concepts in niche tourism together with their examples. In this case, Ground zero-New York for dark tourism and Wildlife Animal Safari-Georgia were selected as the niche tourism examples. The method used to obtain data for this report was by use of live interviews on to the interested parties. The sample of people chosen to represent the general population was just randomly selected and from their feedback, the report was then presented. The report has two examples of niche tourism, in each example the stakeholders involved, consumers, tourism motivation, the impact of developing the tourism concept and recommendations have been outlined (Rogerson, 2011)

Dark in this context is something related to death (Lim & Bendle, 2012). Those places referred to as dark areas are places where death occurred that is; sites of massacre, places of war and also natural disasters. People not only visit lovely places but also curious to know more about such places with a certain history of death, this is referred to as dark tourism. In this case, the report is going to cover dark tourism in Ground Zero that is situated in New York, United States of America. It is the site where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood before they were destroyed during the attack by terrorists. The event occurred on 11^th of September in the year 2001, it occurred as a series of attacks in the morning which ended up claiming up to 3000 live, some of whom died immediately and others later died from cancer and respiratory related diseases (Wilhelm Stanis & Barbieri, 2013) . An official day was set in memory of the event in 2011 and later in 2014, a museum site was set to complement the national Memorial Day, the site is now the one of the major places that attracts people interested in dark tourism.

Stakeholders in Dark Tourism

A stakeholder is an individual, group of people or an organization that has interest in a certain field. Therefore, stakeholders of dark tourism are people, organization or the government that has interest in it and any decision made affects them in one way or another (Torabi Farsani, Shafiei, Adilinasab & Taheri, 2017) . In dark tourism, stakeholders include the host communities, owners or controllers of the sight, spokespeople and the consumers, who are the tourist or can be referred to as visitors. The owners of such tourist attraction sites could be private or public sectors. The role of the owners is to identify the core missions of the dark sites and implement strategies to attain the goals, as they advertise and provide financial management. Host communities are the people who consider the site as their home and the management has to consider their feelings. There could be ways that the host communities do not like the place to be handled due to the respect of those they consider as their people who died and now the reason for tourism attraction. Visitors should mind the way they behave to avoid hurting such people even the way of grieving could be against the norms and beliefs of the community. There this group of stakeholders who matter the most in any form of tourism, the visitors (Borg, 2017). They are the people who bring income if needed and the reason as to why the sites exist is partly to keep memories, respect for the dead as well as attracting tours.

Consumers of dark tourism simply refer to the people who visit death sites (Barry, 2016) .The management works at all cost to attract these customers and the numbers of visitors depend on the nature of the site. Consumers visit such places for their own reasons; some could be because of curiosity, need for education and entertainment or it could be a practice among his or her community according to their beliefs. Tourists have to get deep and correct interpretation of the site so as to meet their needs because that is actually what they came for. Dark tourists are pushed by a number of things to visit such places, these are known as motivations, and things that make them have the desire to pay a visit (Burrai, Font & Cochrane, 2014). Motivations include the need to come in to terms with the past, this is a person who may have had a victim as a close person to them, making it difficult to move on with life, they think that visiting the destination may make them feel better and get over it. Some feel a sense of belonging to the place thus decide to make regular visits to the place while others just want to pay tribute to the death as this could be part of their beliefs or a cultural practice. Another motivation is curiosity to know how people died and unless they pay a visit, they will not be able to know what exactly happened and how (Todd, Leask & Ensor, 2017).

Consumers and Motivations for Dark Tourism

Development and promotion of dark tourism could bring effect to the world and the perception of death (Waligo, Clarke & Hawkins, 2015). Promoting this kind of tourism means that more people shall be attracted to it and visit various dark sites. For instance, if more people visit Ground Zero, it may change how people view death, some take it lightly so much that they do not care taking precautions to avoid mass deaths. This site came up as a result of terrorism attack hence a visit to this place may provide a stronger feeling and get more people to fight and eradicate malicious acts. It could be of great impact to the economy too due to the money collected from tours, hence a source of revenue (Rayamajhi, 2013) .

Since these are places with a history of death, with time, people get to forget about such places and the evidences of things that actually happened fade away as time goes hence less people shall be attracted (Spencer, 2017). For example, if the remnants of building, blood evidence and ashes are what people actually come to see, these things get destroyed as time goes by. Also, when other generations come in who do not really understand what happened and do not have a feeling of attachment, the places shall be neglected and given less attention compared to the time when those who actually witnessed the events were alive. Such places just remain stories and not of any great significance (Curtis, 2017).

 For this kind of tourism to gain popularity among people and grow, those who own the sites should make an effort of creating publicity (Åberg, 2012). It should be included in the school curriculum for students to learn about the places and grow the desire of wanting to visit the dark sites which will end up promoting dark tourism. As such as people visit these places to grieve and learn, life is not all about mourning, owners of the sites should make an effort of providing entertainment to people who pay visit so that at the end, they get edutainment (Ali, 2015).

Wildlife tourism is a kind of tourism that people get to interact and observe wild animals (Pirnar, 2012). This can be done by live hunting them in their natural habitats by foot and vehicles or by looking at their pictures and also viewing captured animals in the wildlife parks. Wildlife tourism is the most common type of tourism practiced in many continents of the world. In the recent past years, wildlife tourism has experienced a rapid growth (Šuši? & Moji?, 2014). Wild Animal Safari is found at the north of Pine Mountain in Georgia. Under more than five hundred acres of land, there are wild animals that tourist get to interact with them live for example giraffes, zebras, rhinos, buffalo camels among so many other kinds of wild animals. Tourist can have the adventure in private cars, rental van or by a tour guide bus (Chen, 2016).

Impacts of Developing Dark Tourism

Stakeholders of this particular kind of tourism include the government, individual owners, neighboring communities and tourists. All these people are directly affected by the decisions made by the wildlife management (Rogerson, 2011). Most of the time, it is the government that own the wildlife under the care of wildlife services and even if the parks are owned by an individual or organization, the government and non-governmental organization see to it that the right of wildlife are not violated. Money gained from wildlife tourism is a source of revenue to the government and foreign exchange (Lim & Bendle, 2012). Neighboring communities are often harmed by these wild animals or their crops destroyed by escaping animals. They are also affected by the presence of tourist both negatively and positively. The positive part is that they get to run businesses by providing food and accommodation for the tourists while the negative side is that sometimes these hosts feel that their children are too much exposed to people from different parts, some of them possess undesirable behaviors (Wilhelm Stanis & Barbieri, 2013).

Consumers of this kind of tourism are people who have interest in wild life and nature (Torabi Farsani, Shafiei, Adilinasab & Taheri, 2017). They come from places just to have an interaction with the nature and the rare animals found in parks and zoos (Borg, 2017) . Some of them could be researchers who are carrying out various studies on the nature, families having vocations away from home. Others can pay visits to places where there are certain animals that are believed to hold a special position among them according to some communities’ cultural practices and beliefs. The motivating factors for such consumers are the need to connect with the nature and relax. Most of the Wild animals are found in their natural habitats where the environment is very friendly. People like to take a break from their busy schedules and towns as they relax in isolated places as well as getting entertained. Another motivating factor is the thirst for adventure; people want to know new things about the nature, see strange animals as well as riding on them such as the elephant riding, horse and camel (Barry, 2016).

The impacts of developing this industry are both negative and positive (Burrai, Font & Cochrane, 2014). Due to regular visits to the parks, the animals are disturbed very much and this can affect their feeding and breeding patterns. Animal bonding between the offspring and the parents are also disrupted. This is because the young ones are separated from the others in the name of protecting them when in real sense; they are being denied the chance to bond with others (Waligo, Clarke & Hawkins, 2015). Due to development of other parks, some animals are taken away which also contribute to bonding denial. The more the tourist, the more they are exposed to poaching. There are other people who pause as tourist when they want to poach these animals and get away with precious parts of these animals. Positively, developing this industry will help countries generate more revenues as the neighboring communities get income from businesses around parks. Game wardens shall be employed in larger number together with tour guides thus provision of jobs (Todd, Leask & Ensor, 2017).

Wildlife Tourism at Wild Animal Safari in Georgia

The future challenge to this kind of tourism is the increasing cases of poaching. Poachers are carrying out illegal hunting which may end up clearing animals from their habitats (Rayamajhi, 2013). Some animals are coming to extinction due to the change in the environment where they cannot sustain it anymore (Curtis, 2017). There is the encroaching desert that is being experienced in most parts of the world which put these particular animals in danger as most of them survive in places where there are forests and plenty of water. Water pollution and air pollution is putting these animals at a great risk. For instance, people dispose chemicals in liver which pass by their habitats, when the animals take such poisoned water, they probably die hence there is nothing anymore to attract tourists (Spencer, 2017).

The government, non-governmental organization and other stakeholders should come up with better policies to protect wild animals from poachers and pollution so that the industry can develop (Åberg, 2012). Animals should be put in secure and protected places under maximum security so that poachers do not have a chance of reaching the animals (Ali, 2015) . Revenue collected from wildlife tourism should be used to put up more structures and parks to accommodate all the animals so that people can watch them from zoos and wildlife parks. The issue of cutting down trees without replacing should be banned because forest are the major habitats f wild animals and if trees are cleared, the animals are going to die and the wildlife tourism eventually die (Pirnar, 2012.

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