CACTUS CACTUS J Tour Bus Manag Econ CACTUS – Journal of Tourism Business, Management and Economics 2247-3297 ASE Publishing House Bucharest, Romania 10.24818/CTS/5/2023/2.06 cactus-2023-15 Research Article L82, L83 Dark Tourism in Romania: The Bellu Cemetery Sandu Maria Alexandra sandu4alexandra19@stud.ase.ro Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania 15 12 2023 5 2 15122023 Copyright © 2023, The Author(s) 2023 The Author(s) This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This article focuses on the most important aspects of dark tourism and deals with the Romanian population's perception of the Bellu Cemetery of Bucharest, a must-see dark tourism attraction. The main purpose of this research was to collect and analyze the opinions of Romanians regarding dark tourism, especially their opinion about the practice of tourism in this cemetery. The objectives to be achieved were (1) to determine the main motives for visiting the cemetery, (2) to determine the most popular gravestones, (3) to determine if and why people believe the cemetery is haunted, and (4) to determine the ethical concerns of being a tourist there. Accordingly, a survey was conducted for the defined scope. It was found that Romanians of all ages are positive about the concept of dark tourism and are willing to practice it.

 Keywords Dark tourism tombstone tourism Bellu Cemetery

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