Energy and industrial tourism: a specific niche on the tourism market

Abstract

Energy tourism belongs to the not-so-well-researched fields of tourism. Being a part of the industrial tourism or a special interest tourism, this type of tourism includes visits to the energy facilities and locations such as factories, mines, power stations and renewable energy sites. This paper describes the niche of the energy tourism within the tourism market and assesses its potential. We show that sometimes the energy tourism might intervene with dark tourism (for example, in the case of the tourist visits to the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power station). In addition, we show that this type of tourism is closely correlated with the public and social acceptance of traditional and renewable energy facilities. We conclude that this might be a promising and emerging type of tourism that will likely grow due to the ongoing industrialization and expenditure of energy-generating facilities envisaged for meeting the growing demand for energy all around the world.