Debra Kamin traces the pedigree of “dark tourism” back to the 1800s if not earlier, but in recent years, sightseeing in war zones has become big business:
Fueled by travel documentaries such as Vice videos and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, the broader adventure-tourism industry, which includes travel to war zones and political hotspots, has grown by an average of 65 percent annually over the past four years and is now estimated to be worth $263 billion. While some hyper-extreme tour operators, among them War Zone Tours and Wild Frontiers, have been around since the 1990s, the past decade has produced a bumper crop of plucky agencies catering to thrill-seeking wayfarers. …
Nicholas Wood, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, had a similar desire after years of filing stories from the Balkans. So in 2009 he left journalism and launched the more cerebral Political Tours, which takes small groups of tourists to the world’s political hotspots. His trips take about a year to plan. “We work like a newspaper editor,” Wood, who is based in the U.K., explains. “We know how to put a tour together—we have all of these elements and it’s like building a story.” Growth has been slow but steady, Wood says, with Political Tours now offering excursions to 15 destinations including Israel and the Palestinian Territories and post-financial crisis London. Their “Libya: After the Revolution” tour, for instance, costs $7,000 and includes visits to Muammar Qaddafi’s former compound and the notorious Abu Salim prison, along with face-to-face meetings with some of the militia members currently controlling the city of Misrata.
(Photo by flickr user Todd Huffman. Caption: “Tourism finally here. Some enterprising Afghans have turned this tank into a tourist spot, and also a place to sell knockoff watches”)
The Dish 