What will you do on your next vacation? 5 types of tourism you should explore
Battlefields, places marked by massacres, and miraculous sanctuaries are the new alternatives
When thinking about travel or vacations, it is usual to think in destinations like beaches, mountains, or metropolises. However, there are places that attract a more eccentric and mysterious public. These epicenters have generated new expressions of tourism of which we will display some here.
Leer en español: ¿Qué harás en tus próximas vacaciones? 5 tipos de turismo que debes explorar
1. Dark Tourism
This kind of tourism has nothing of paradisiacal. Instead of comfortable beds and luxurious restaurants, the stages are filled with ruins caused by wars, natural disasters, or macabre massacres.
Dark tourism is directly associated with death, pain, and suffering; characteristics that attract thousands of tourists every year, who seek to understand an alien social reality.
One of the most visited places of dark tourism is in New York, where the emblematic World Trade Center were demolished killing nearly 3,000 people in just minutes.
Chernobyl, the concentration camps in Poland -where close to a million Jews were killed-, and even the route through which immigrants who cross the border between Mexico and the United States illegally, have become a destination for curious tourists trying to live the story or a cruel reality, from a safer scenario.
2. War Tourism
Like dark turism, this type of trips seeks to bring tourists to more impressive experiences. Those who consider that jumping from a parachute or swimming with sharks is not enough adrenaline, and look for stronger emotions and uncertainty, choose to visit active war zones to face terror firsthand.
Also read: 5 dreamy places that you should visit at least once in your life
Although this type of trips consists of recreational and supervised tours on battlefields, it is called "suicide tourism", given that only a fairly 'eccentric' population would pay to get in the middle of a war.
3. LGBTI tourism
LGBTI tourism is aimed exclusively at this community and seeks to offer destinations where tranquility and respect for diversity prevail along with conventional tourism activities. According to reports from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), same-sex couples without children have more annual money for travel and entertainment than traditional families.
That is why according to figures from the company Marketing Community Inc, only in the United States LGBTI travelers generate an annual impact on the economy of 65 billion dollars per year.
4. Religious Tourism
Jerusalem, Mecca, Rome and in Latin America Mexico and Ecuador, are the reference points of this tourist sector that reaches more than 300 million people each year to undertake a trip to these destinations for reasons of faith.
In this modality, the visits to emblematic places are changed by tours of basilicas, sanctuaries, tombs, and places considered sacred or miraculous. Only in Mexico, this type of tourism attracts more than 10 million visitors per year, and globally, religious tourism leaves close to 18 billion dollars per year, according to statistics from the World Tourism Organization.
5. Space Tourism
Although it is not yet a reality, in 2022 the space agency Orion Span will offer tourists, who can pay 9.5 million dollars, the possibility of vacation in a luxury hotel 200 miles above the earth's surface.
Space tourism refers to the transport of people who, for pleasure, and without professional or exploratory intentions, pay to leave the Earth. This is done more than 100 kilometers above the earth's surface and some private agencies see it as a possibility to generate income that can boost research or spatial development.
While these projects are currently exclusive to billionaires, the costs of travel are much lower than what would be a conventional space trip, since according to data from the North American Air Force, each space launch has an average cost of 400 million of dollars.
For which of these types of tourism would you change the traditional trip to the beach?
LatinAmerican Post | Krishna Jaramillo
Translated from "¿Qué harás en tus próximas vacaciones? 5 tipos de turismo que debes explorar "
