Post-disaster tourism: building resilience through community-led approaches in the aftermath of the 2011 disasters in Japan

Abstract

Post-disaster tourism is often perceived as a form of Dark Tourism associated with death, loss and destruction. In Japan, the term Dark Tourism has gained prominence following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. This paper focuses on a community-led approach to post-disaster tourism development, initiated in the coastal area of Minamisanriku and labelled by the locals Blue Tourism. From its inception Blue Tourism incorporated non-dark activities which concentrated on the beauty of nature, social and environmental sustainability and the development of an enriched tourist experience. Its co-creational ethos helped transform some of the negative narratives of loss associated with Dark Tourism into positive accounts of communal renewal and hope. The paper highlights the limitations of Dark Tourism to post-disaster recovery and contributes new insights to the community-based tourism literature. We argue that Blue Tourism is not a type of Dark Tourism but a form of resilience which builds around local place-based practices and traditional community knowledge. Consequently, it is capable of achieving sustainable disaster recovery and tourist satisfaction simultaneously.

Keywords:

• Post-disaster tourism
• Dark Tourism
• service co-creation
• community-based tourism
• post-disaster recovery
• Japan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation under Grant No. 4862.

Notes on contributors

Yiwen Lin

Yiwen Lin is a PhD candidate in her final year and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Keele Management School. She is the recipient of a Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation grant which enabled her to conduct fieldwork in Minamisanriku, Japan. Her research focuses on disaster tourism, CBT, active learning, social capital and disaster management. Her most recent paper has been published by IJPM.

Mihaela Kelemen

Mihaela Kelemen is Professor of Management Studies and Public Engagement at Keele University and Director of the Community Animation and Social Innovation Centre (CASIC). Her research explores communities in crisis, volunteering, community health, community leadership and food poverty, and has been funded by the AHRC, ESRC and EPSRC. Outputs have been disseminated in academic books and articles as well as via podcasts, audio-visual interactive installations and documentary interactive performances.

Richard Tresidder

Richard Tresidder is a reader in hospitality studies at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University. He holds a Doctorate in the semiotics of tourism. His interests focus on the socio-anthropology of tourism, hospitality, event and food and how these experiences are represented in marketing texts and the behaviours of both hosts and guests.