A LEADING tourism expert has said Germany could attract many more international travellers if it promoted the architectural relics of Nazism.
Professor John Lennon is to tell a conference in Peenemünde in northern Germany that there are huge opportunities to exploit "dark tourism", by packaging up the horrors of the past.
Prof Lennon, director of the Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development, part of Glasgow Caledonian University, said that thoughtful exhibitions at historical Nazi sites, including the 1936 Berlin Olympic stadium, would attract visitors.
He said: "There is an inherent interest in this stuff. I'd like to say it's because people are interested in history and want to learn from the past, but I think a big part of it is voyeurism. They want an experience that is a little different."
Prof Lennon coined the term "dark tourism" in the 1990s to describe people who toured battlefields and walked Jack the Ripper trails. Contemporary tourists are also drawn to sites such as the spot in Dallas where President Kennedy was assassinated.
Prof Lennon said these attractions should be promoted as long as tour operators were not pandering to bad taste.
He added: "You have to be sensitive to everything, from what you put into the coffee shop to what you serve in the cafe. In Washington, they were incredibly careful about working out the right sort of catering [for the Holocaust Memorial Museum], that it would be kosher, that it would be a calming place with nothing on the walls to distract you.
"Go to Auschwitz and you can still have a ham sandwich. That sensitivity isn't there - maybe because it's the real place and there are bigger issues.
"I'm not saying it doesn't do a good job, but that was a bit jarring for me.
"I also found the content of the retail area a bit peculiar - postcards in concentration camps?"
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