Disaster tourism is the act of traveling to a disaster area for pleasure, usually out of curiosity.

Disaster Tourism is used for leisure travels to zones whipped by natural disasters or traumatic events known as "traumascapes".^[1] Some scholars argue that these sites offers a message to visitors and tourists in order for them to interpret their own life.^[2] Disaster tourism offers a pedagogical instrument to community to accelerate the time in post recovery process.^[3][4] Rodanthi Tzanelli, lecturer at University of Leeds called the attention to the needs to articulate trans-disciplinary research to understand Thana Tourism or Disaster Tourism.^[5]

R. Tzanelli explores the role of thanaptosis in the media and film-industries. She says that the success of globalization depends on the economy of imagination, where the elite elaborates biased or singled out explanations of disasters in order to keep its priviledge position. With basis on colonization and slumming, Tzanelli alludes to dark tourism as a new trend where global North powers, who have played an active role in the process of colonization, today imposes a one-sided message over the global south^[6].

Disaster tourism took hold in the Greater New Orleans area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.^{[citation needed]}

Some local residents have criticized these tours as unethical, because the tour companies are profiting from the misery of their communities and families. The Army Corps of Engineers has noted that traffic from tour buses and other tourist vehicles have interfered with the movement of trucks and other cleanup equipment on single-lane residential roads. Furthermore, during the first six months after the storm, most of these neighborhoods lacked electricity, phone access, street signs, or access to emergency medical or police assistance. Simply traveling to these neighborhoods was hazardous. Some residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard parishes were less than welcoming to tour buses in their neighborhoods and sometimes outright hostile.^{[citation needed]}

Communities such as Gentilly and Lakeview, along the 17th Street Canal, have welcomed organized tour groups as a means to publicize the scale of the destruction and attract more aid to the city. Much of the recovery effort in the New Orleans relies on out-of-state volunteers and donations. Numerous non-profit organizations, including Habitat for Humanity International and Catholic Charities, have converged on the city to gut and rebuild homes. There is also a movement by local residents to bring congressmen and other national leaders to the city and view the damage in person, since recovery efforts have been hampered by the failure of many homeowners and businesses to receive claims from their insurance providers.^{[citation needed]}

Eyjafjallajökull, in Iceland, began erupting on 20 March 2010.^[7][8] 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.^[9]

In the wake of the first eruption, tour companies offered trips to see the volcano.^[10] 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.^[9][11][12]

• Dark tourism
• War tourism