Every time a documentary about Chernobyl or a genocide memorial trends online, the same criticism follows: isn't this just voyeurism dressed up as travel? It's a fair question, and it deserves a real answer rather than defensiveness.
Dark tourism, done well, is one of the oldest forms of travel there is. Pilgrims have visited sites of martyrdom and mass death for centuries. What has changed is scale, speed, and the ease with which a place of real suffering can be reduced to a photo backdrop. The difference between remembrance and voyeurism is not the destination — it's the intent, the preparation, and the behaviour once you arrive.
A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with a licensed guide, prepared beforehand for what you'll see and why, briefed on etiquette, and given space afterwards to process it, is fundamentally different from an unprepared drive-by stop between two more cheerful destinations. The site is the same. The visit is not.
This is why the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at UCLan exists, and why we align our practice with their published frameworks. Dark tourism isn't inherently exploitative — but it can become exploitative fast, in the hands of an operator who doesn't take the responsibility seriously. That's the whole reason a specialist matters here.