Dark Tourism: Impact, Risk Management, and External Factors

This report delves into the working of organizations in the dark tourism industry and the impact they face. It discusses the external factors and stakeholders' influence on the business. The report also covers risk management and the importance of dark tourism for education. Additionally, it provides insights into the external business environment and marketing strategies for Warwick Castle dungeons.

DARK TOURISM

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.
It has been discussed in the report about the working of organization in Dark Tourism and the impact
they can face while working in the industry. The report has been provided the information about the
external environment factors of the business and the stakeholders impact on the overall business of the
organization. Report has been providing the risk management and the influence factors which can
impact on the overall organization benefits.

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................................4
Dark Tourism...........................................................................................................................................4
Importance of Dark Tourism...................................................................................................................4
Overview.................................................................................................................................................4
Analysis of External Business Environment.................................................................................................5
PESTEL analysis........................................................................................................................................5
Porter's Five Force analysis.....................................................................................................................6
Competitor analysis.................................................................................................................................7
Stakeholder analysis................................................................................................................................8
Marketing Strategies:................................................................................................................................10
Risks involved in strategies for Warwick Castle dungeons:........................................................................11
Ethical and Legal Implication.....................................................................................................................13
Ethical and legal implications of data management..............................................................................13
The importance of reputation management.........................................................................................13
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................................13
Recommendation..................................................................................................................................14
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................................15
INTRODUCTION
Dark Tourism
Dark tourism refers to the places in the tourism which are associated with death and tragedy.
Dark tourism are very famous among the people who willing to go to such places which are famous for

its tragedy or death. While people are following a long tradition of visiting the traditional and ancient
places as a tourist, dark tourism is totally different from them as they are those places where people
follow protocols and need to follow the guidelines. Dark tourism is about the places where the
restrictions and the condition applies as they are not open for people below the age 6 years or for the
pregnant women etc. Warwick Castle work in the dark tourism, and they provide different activity at the
place they are working in the Warwick, London.
Importance of Dark Tourism
Dark tourism is important as people need to know about the actual incident or the tragedy
happened at the places. It is very important for the education and the visitors who want to know the
tragedy happened at the location. There are a lot of people who write books, and they want to know
about the location and the information they want to tell to every person through their articles and
books. It is an historical structure and people need to be aware about the place so that they can develop
a better understanding about the place (Lennon, 2017). They visit the place as an historical location.
There are a lot of education details at such places as the people get to know about a lot of scientific
things and other ways by which they can get a great idea about the history of the building and about to
get knowledge regarding the historic place.
Overview
Warwick Castle Dungeon is a place located in UK, it is a Historic castle where people can visit
and can know about the place. The owner of the place are the Secure Income REIT Plc and the operator
of the Castle are the Merlin Enterprises. They also provide a portfolio of the hotel and the activity in the
castle to make it realistic (The Castle Dungeon, 2020). It is a 50 minutes walk through experience bring
by the live actors at the place. They show and special effects that will made to chill down the spine. It is
a fully immersive, experience that only be visited by the bravest people and those who can handle or
survive strange activity offered by the organization. They are having the restriction in the castle with
terms and condition.
Analysis of External Business Environment.
PESTEL analysis

Political
Political factors impact on the tourism industry through the changes in the
government and the government policies including Brexit and its impacts
which the organization needs to consider. The tourism attracts different
people beyond the border and for that the policies of the open boarder need
to be given from the government (Phan, 2021). The government stability also
affect the Warwick Castle tourism and the organization gets affected due to
that. The change in the policies due to the Covid-19 outbreak and Brexit issues
are causing a lot of situations where the political changes affected the
business (AMADEO, 2021). It is due to the precautions and the change in the
working with new laws in the industry.
Economical
The rising disposable income is one of the major factor which is beneficial for
the tourism industry and it is great external environment factor which is
attracting the business for the tourism of Warwick Castle Dungeons. The other
factor is of the sharing economy which is of sharing the good and services in

exchange to provide a great support to the organization in getting wider
audience.
Social
Social factors are the social pressure and the racial acceptance in the industry.
They need to develop a process of making it in trend as it attract more people
and audience these days follow the trends of the market. Social factor is one
of the biggest reason of the attraction of the people into the dark tourism and
to find new places. This is one of the factor which help the Warwick Castle
Dungeons in attracting customers. The Outbreak of covid-19 have made a lot
of impact in the business and also in the mentality of the customers. Audience
were too scared to visit places in the covid-19 situation and the organization
got a huge loss in the business. They made different strategies in increasing
and attracting the customer by making the requirements of the safety
completed.
Technological
Technologies are important and the Warwick Castle Dungeon need to make
sure that they utilize the technologies to increase the performance of the
castle. Technologies can help the people in buying the ticket and booking
online. They can also get the transport facilities from the organization. The
organization need to utilize the technologies' acceptance to increase the
efficiency of the work. New technologies of the body temperature machinery
and the sanitization equipment are installed by the organization to attract the
customer by showing the safety precautions. Since, due to outburst of Covid-
19 it is very essential that every organization will have to adopt advanced
technology which will leads to meet their motive along with acting as
precautionary measurements.
Environment
Warwick Castle Dungeon need to make sure that they follow the environment
factors in the best ways so that they can create a better performance in
attracting the customer. They need to make sure that they are controlling the

transport pollution and the tourist negligence at the place because they are
those things which need to be done so that the audience can be in control and
the place does not get negative or bad impact on the reputation of brand
(Perera, 2017).
Legal
Warwick Castle Dungeon need to make sure that they are following all the
legal factors made by the government about the places as it is crucial that
they follow the guidelines and legal legislation made by the government to be
fulfilled by the Warwick Castle Dungeons. The Brexit legislation and the
precautions for the covid-19 made by the government need to be followed by
the organization. Since, due to Bexit and Covid many restrictions are imposed
over tourism sector. So it is very essential for every organization to have
compliance with all rules and regulation regarding these concepts.
Porter's Five Force analysis
 Competitive rivalry: The competition in the industry is intense and High. Every place has a
different and a unique taste in UK and it is important for the organization to make sure that they
use the best strategies in advancing the ways to develop the process of working. The ghost bus
tour and the London bridge experience are the competitors of the organization. They need to
make sure that they make strategies which can help them in creating more customer attraction
(Guo and et.al., 2017).

 Supplier power: The power of supplier is high as it is into the hand of the supplier to provide the
services. For that it is important for the Warwick Castle Dungeons to make sure that they are
having enough suppliers.
 Buyer power: Customer are having a lot of varieties which increases their power to moderate.
They are having a variety of choices from the competition in the market. They can opt from
different competitive organization and services.
 Threat of Substitute: Threat of substitute are medium as there are a lot of variety and option for
the audience from different ways of services they can choose from. There are different
organization like the London Bridge etc. which are providing the facilities, customers can pick
from different activities they want and it can also increase the chances of the competition in the
market (Hatzijordanou, 2019).
 Threat of New Entry: Threat of new entry are low as it required a lot of capital to start such new
business with the view of heritage and historical. It makes things harder for the new entrant as
they need to make sure they are providing something better or else it can become very tough
for them to survive in the market where the competition is too high.
Competitor analysis
When it comes to the same attraction in the London, UK, there are a lot of places in UK which
give a good competition to the Castle. Here are some following:
 The Warwick Castle.
 Jack the Ripper tours
 Bart's Pathology Museum
The Warwick Castle Jack the Ripper Tours Bart's Pathology
Museum
Description The tour of torture and
the tragedy happened at
the Warwick Castle.
The story of the serial
killer named Jack, the
story of autumn of
terror as impoverished
Bart's Pathology
Museum had a variety of
death salon events in
UK, there are numerous

prostitutes are brutally
slaughtered by the
mystery killer (Bruijl,
2018).
specimens at Bart's
Pathology Museum
including the skeleton of
the conjoined twins and
the skull of assassin who
killed British Prime
Minister.
Target customer Adults who are
interested in the history
and knowledge about
the tragedy.
Adults as the story is
providing adult
information.
The people who want to
understand about the
pathology and the study
on different skeleton
body parts.
Marketing Advertisement by the
Merlin group as they
operate the place,
Trails and tours by
Katherine Conlon
Through different tours
and travel.
Advantages over
competitors
It is one of the oldest
place In UK which attract
the people who are
interested in the history
of the place.
It provides a great
adventure of the story
of the serial mystery
killer.
It provides a great
knowledge about the
skeletons and there are
different skeletons of
the assassins who killed
the British Prime
Minister.
Stakeholder analysis
Identification of the Stakeholders
Stakeholders are the individual and the group of people who are interested in the organization
or in the working of the organization. They may wish to influence the mission and the objective
strategies of the business. There are two type of stakeholders in the organization. The internal and
external.
Internal Stakeholders: They are those who have the direct control on the organization and their
decisions. It is the responsibilities of the company and are the employee of the company as well. They

can be the employee, manager, owner and the investors of the organization. The Warwick Castle
Dungeons internal stakeholders are their actors who act in the castle and are the people working for the
organization in the place, the owner of the castle.
External Stakeholders: External analysis of the Warwick Castle Dungeons are the customers, government
and the society where the organization is working. External stakeholders pose indirect impact on the
business and only get affected by the overall work of the company but are are employed in it.
Stakeholder Management.
After the identification of the stakeholders it is very important to find and analyse which group are
crucial for the organization. One of the most used method for management of the stakeholder are the
mapping process which Warwick Castle Dungeons use in the process of workplace.
Latent
These are those stakeholders of the Warwick Castle Dungeons which have a great influence on the
choice strategies of business with low interest. These stakeholders for the organization are the taxes,
government legislation, laws of activity of different location (Baoyu, 2020).

Key players or promoters
They are stakeholder for the Warwick Castle Dungeons which have high power and high influence on
the business. They represent the key role in the success of the business and it needs to be managed
and engaged in regularly.
Marginal
They are those stakeholders who do not have much interest in the business and does not influence
company's action as well. The organization need to monitor such stakeholders and need to make sure
that they are actively informed on the occasions.
Defender
They are having a great interest in the process or working of the business but do not influence much in
the Merlin process of working. They are representatives as customer and community member.
Stakeholder planning
After understanding the entire process of stakeholder analysis, the ones which impact the organization
most and are also into the decision-making needed the proper plans by the organization to work and
handle the influence (Eskerod and Larsen, 2018).
Stakeholder Engagement
After all the approaches are made to the management and communication have been considered in
planning phases. The Warwick Castle Dungeons now need to pick the most resourceful approach.
Marketing Strategies:
Situational analysis. : The Castle is located in the Warwick, London and is having half a million visitors
per year and is Ranked No 1 in the Ranking in visitors attraction in Warwick. The revenue of the
organization is $435,000 sales (USD)
 Objectives : Warwick Castle want to be one of the market leader in the midlands UK and are
providing the best quality services to attract more of the customer and to achieve the business
objective and goals of the castle.
 Strategy : The company is working in a lot of advertisement activities to increase the awareness
about the activities they are providing to the customers. Thy are increasing the brand promotion

to achieve the business objectives and also increasing the services to make sure they provide
better services from the competitor in the market (Sapapthai, S. and et.al., 2020).
 Tactics : There are a lot of strategies and tactics Warwick Castle are utilizing in achieving the
business objective and goals. They are providing different offers and discount to the people on
various occasion to increase the sale in the market and also to make the people get the services
awareness they want them to know. Providing of the discount and family ticket are the ways
which help the Warwick Castle in attracting more customers. It will also help in better sales of
ticket and also in increasing business profit.
 Action : The action is by making different approaches to make sure what are the pricing
strategies look like. They need to make sure that they are giving the limited discount to the
people and also limited discount offer so that the brand value do not fall in the market. The
limited offer help in remaining the actual business price's. Planning and making strategies to
increase the process of working and to achieve the business they are developing action of
transportation and complimentary things.
 Control : Warwick Castle monitor the operation and management of the organization by
checking the regular monitoring of the visitors and the feedbacks they are getting in increasing
the business by making changes according the feedbacks, they also look at the sale of the
business and update regular changes in the strategies of pricing and complimentary things to
change the impact of business (Ducange, Pecori and Mezzina, 2018).
Risks involved in strategies for Warwick Castle dungeons:
Social Risk
Social risk are the risk of trends and changes of preferences of the people for the activities
the organization is providing. It can be change in the choices of people which can be a major risk for
the organization as it can affect the business sales and overall objectives. Social risk can cause a lot
of issues as the preferences of the consumer can make a lot of changes in the sales and services
which the organification want to sale to the audience.
Financial Risk
The financial risk include the funding risk and the interest rate risk which the organization
need to take on the serious note as it can create a lot of issues to the company. The pricing risk to
the Warwick Castle as it can make things go negative if the pricing strategies of the organization is

too beneficiary for the customer than it can cause the organization in huge loss when it comes to the
sale and profits. The financial risk also include the operating risk of the business and it also makes
the liquidity risk as the entity can face issues in the sufficient funds.
Reputation Risk
The reputation risk refer to the risk of the change in the reputation of the business and
organization in the market. It includes the perception of the people or audience towards the services
and activity the organization is offering to the audience in market. The change in taste and
preferences of the customer and the perception of the customer towards the business. It is also
required to be managed by the organization in changing the reputation by changing the activity and
process of planning by providing new activity to the audience (Manso and et.al., 2020).
Legal Factors
Legal factors include the legal guidelines which the organization need to make sure when
they are providing the services they follow all the policies and guideline which are made by the
government to make sure that every activity is done in the proper manner and followed by all the
safety and security measure at place. The organization need to make strategies which covered all
the necessary following in the process of working along with significant steps related to Brexit and
Covid so that the working of the organization do not get affected.
Ethical and Legal Implication
Ethical and legal implications of data management
Digital revolution is covering all the data on one places and it is important for the Warwick
Castle to make sure that they provide the safety to the privacy of the customer and audience who are
visiting the place. They need to make sure that they are giving privacy and making it secure that no data
gets disclosed. It can harm both the company and the stakeholders if the data is careless and
unauthorized (Moreno-Lax, 2019).
The importance of reputation management
The importance of the reputation management is that the organization need to maintain a
brand reputation in the market. It is very important for the organization to maintain their brand in the

market so that they can attract more customer and can achieve the business objective they are having.
It is important to make sure that the market reputation remain good and for that the organization follow
a lot of guidelines including the culture and sensitivity of the place so that no sentiments gets harms into
any religion or caste. It is mandatory for the organization to create a working process where they work
on all the activities to make sure the reputation. Organization also make sure that they are following the
entire policies of creating the activity on such places where the visitors are coming, they need to make
them avail all the activity with proper measurements and security (Schönberger, 2019).
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that tourism is a wide sector and Dark tourism is a
part of tourism which include different ways and policies. There are a lot of issues which the tourism
industry and the Warwick Castle have faced due to the covid-19 pandemic. The organization had made
several changes to cope up with the pandemic situation and the change in customer’s mentality has
affected the business. The report concludes the external environment importance in the business as it
includes different factors and the report also provide the conclusion for the stakeholder importance and
the situational analysis of the Dark Tourism. The marketing strategies and the Risk management in the
industry is very high, and they need to make sure that the competition in the industry is very high for
which they required to increase the strategies.
Recommendation
 Sustainability: To recommend it is important for the organization to make sure that they follow
the sustainability practices in the process of operation and working. They need to make
strategies accordingly to increase the working.
 Price Strategies: They need to make sure that they are changing the pricing strategies of the
business activities they are selling into the market or the offering they are giving to the
customer.
 Target marketing: To recommend they also need to make the proper target market in the
workplace and need to segment the business so that thy can focus on the target marketing.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Lennon, J., 2017. Dark tourism. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Perera, R., 2017. The PESTLE analysis. Nerdynaut.
Phan, S., 2021. The effect of PESTLE factors on development of e-commerce. International Journal of
Data and Network Science. 5(1). pp.37-42.
Guo and et.al., 2017. Automated competitor analysis using big data analytics. Business process
management journal.
Hatzijordanou, N., 2019. Competitor Analysis Framework-Interaktiv.
Bruijl, G.H.T., 2018. The relevance of Porter's five forces in today's innovative and changing business
environment. Available at SSRN 3192207.
Baoyu, L., 2020. Analysis on the Competitive Situation of Yunnan Sports Tourism Industry from the
Perspective of Porter's “Five Forces Model”. Journal of Qujing Normal University. 39(2). p.56.
Eskerod, P. and Larsen, T., 2018. Advancing project stakeholder analysis by the concept ‘shadows of the
context’. International Journal of Project Management. 36(1). pp.161-169.
Sapapthai, S. and et.al., 2020. A Stakeholder analysis approach for area business continuity
management: A systematic review. Journal of Disaster Research. 15(5). pp.588-598.
Ducange, P., Pecori, R. and Mezzina, P., 2018. A glimpse on big data analytics in the framework of
marketing strategies. Soft Computing. 22(1). pp.325-342.
Moreno-Lax, V., 2019. Border-induced displacement: The ethical and legal implications of distance-
creation through externalization. Questions of International Law.
Manso and et.al., 2020. Use of photography in dermatology: Ethical and legal implications. Actas Dermo-
Sifiliográficas (English Edition). 111(2). pp.107-114.
Schönberger, D., 2019. Artificial intelligence in healthcare: a critical analysis of the legal and ethical
implications. International Journal of Law and Information Technology. 27(2). pp.171-203.
Online references:
AMADEO, K., 2021. What Was Brexit, and How Did It Impact the UK, EU, and the US?. [Online]. Available
through <https://www.thebalance.com/brexit-consequences-4062999>
The Castle Dungeon. 2020. [Online]. Availble through
<https://www.warwick-castle.com/explore/shows/the-castle-dungeon/#:~:text=The%20Castle
%20Dungeon%20is%20an,age%20of%2010%20years%20old.>