Exploring travellers’ experiences when visiting Verdun battlefield: a TripAdvisor case study

Frédéric Bornarel, Hélène Delacour, Sébastien Liarte and Sandrine Virgili

Current Issues in Tourism, 2021, vol. 24, issue 6, 824-841

Abstract: This study contributes to research on the tourist’s experience of a battlefield site by comparing the way they report on the different sub-sites belonging to it, and by using an integrated approach. We focused on Verdun, a major site of the Great War in France, composed of different sub-sites (memorials, forts, trenches, etc.). By analysing 1,581 online reviews posted by tourists on the TripAdvisor website between 2012 and 2017, our findings reveal that tourists report differently on each sub-site, highlighting the relational and emotional dimensions of their experience. Our results first suggest that the site’s degree of darkness and commodification influence the relational dimension of their experience by generating or not a deep empathy relationship. We then reveal that while the events took place more than a century ago, the emotional dimension of their experience is still deep, thanks to the preservation of the site’s dark attributes.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2020.1751593 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rcitxx:v:24:y:2021:i:6:p:824-841

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcit20

DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2020.1751593

Access Statistics for this article

Current Issues in Tourism is currently edited by Jennifer Tunstall

More articles in Current Issues in Tourism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().