Disaster tourism

An article by Smartertravel defines the motivations present in individuals practicing disaster tourism. Attraction is typically derived from personal connection in a social, academic or cultural essence. Another population of visitors hope to aid in providing relief to the affected areas—some directly through volunteer work and some indirectly through donations. Other visitors have no connection to the site or the event, but happen to be there as tourists and visit those places as part of their sightseeing. A common example of this is tourists who come to Italy to sightsee in Rome and end up visiting Pompeii and its neighboring cities without initially intending to do so. == Reception==

Disaster tourism has had a mixed reception. Critics label it as voyeuristic and profiting off of loss, while advocates argue that tourism stimulates the recovering economy and brings awareness to local culture. Although the public perception of tourism depends on a wide variety of factors, such as whether the disaster was human-made or natural and how long it has been since the incident, there are some general trends in the reception of tourism. Depending on the site or tour, disaster tourism can be seen to be an educational experience or exploitative. Whether or not a tourist site is handled respectfully and tactfully often is determined both by those organizing the events and the tourists themselves. Moreover, advocates of disaster tourism point out that attractions can educationally re-examine disasters despite the operators being motivated by profit. Many of these advocates argue that when distasteful disaster tourism occurs, the blame lies primarily on the tourists for providing an insensitive demand rather than on the operators for fulfilling such a demand. For both tourists and operators, however, parsing the difference between an educational and an exploitative one requires asking what areas are crucial for understanding the disaster and clarifying how behavior that is appropriate in a destroyed area is often different from the behavior that is appropriate in newly built homes or temporary camps. Similarly, visiting disaster sites is thought to affect empathy, but the nature of the effect it has depends on the particulars of the visit. Unorganized visits, for example, can often raise empathy by forcing the visitors to see suffering up close and prompting them to consider how to interact with victims. On the other hand, more organized visits have been accused of lowering empathy because they comprised tourists "acting like tourists and dressing like tourists," which dilutes and sanitizes the experience. This led to widespread criticism, and authorities demanded that unnecessary visits to Kavalappara be avoided. == Virtual reality ==

Facebook's virtual tour of Puerto Rico In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria is estimated to caused 3,059 deaths total, and in Puerto Rico, it is estimated to have caused $90 billion in property damage and displaced approximately 60,000 people. On October 9, 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook social VR chief Rachel Franklin used a livestream to showcase Facebook’s new virtual reality app, Facebook Spaces, by taking a virtual tour of the devastated areas of Puerto Rico. During the 10 minute video, Zuckerberg explains how Facebook partnered with Red Cross to build a population map from satellite imagery and better allocate the relief effort. The public reception to the tour was unanimously negative. Zuckerberg drew criticism for describing VR as "magical" in its ability to transport people to disaster zones, and most viewers considered the cartoon avatars of Zuckerberg and Franklin to be an inappropriately jovial tone. The day following the livestream, Zuckerberg apologized, explaining, "When you're in VR yourself, the surroundings feel quite real. But that sense of empathy doesn't extend well to people watching you as a virtual character on a 2D screen." ==Examples==

79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius When the nearby volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the eruption buried the city of Pompeii and the nearby city of Herculaneum and preserved everything from its streets to its frescoes under mounds of pumice and ash. Although Pompeii was initially rediscovered in 1599, tourism was undesirable until Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre performed a much larger excavation in 1748, which revealed many noteworthy structures, such as a fully intact Roman theatre. Today, Pompeii belongs to the much larger Vesuvius National Park and is one of Italy’s most popular tourist sites, attracting approximately 2.5 million visitors annually. Today, a bronze plaque and cement outline the site of the incident. Immediately east of the crash site, volunteers of the Navy Lakehurst Historical Society will conduct public tours of Historic Hangar One, the location where the Hindenburg was kept. 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland, began erupting on 20 March 2010. At this time, about 500 farmers and their families from the areas of Fljótshlíð, Eyjafjöll, and Landeyjar were evacuated overnight, but allowed to return to their farms and homes after Civil Protection Department risk assessment. On 14 April 2010, Eyjafjallajökull erupted for the second time, requiring 800 people to be evacuated. In the wake of the first eruption, tour companies offered trips to see the volcano. However, the ash cloud from the second eruption disrupted air traffic over Great Britain and most of northern and western Europe, making it difficult to travel to Iceland even though Iceland's airspace itself remained open throughout. 2010 eruption of Mount Merapi In the November of 2010, the active Indonesian volcano of Mount Merapi had its second eruption in a century, which led to direct deaths of 353 people and the displacement of approximately 400,000 people in nearby villages. Mount Merapi is unique among disaster tourist sites because Merapi was a popular tourist site prior to the volcano’s eruption, and tourism had already made up a significant portion of the local economy. While many tour companies and travel agencies hold more standard sightseeing tours with jeeps of the affected areas, some programs provide more direct paths to donating to local charities and getting involved in the relief effort. For example, the Go Green Campaign encourages tourists to purchase small trees or seeds and plant them in local villages. ==See also==