Hunting humans: A future for tourism in 2200

Abstract

This paper offers a future scenario to expose the potential engagement of tourism in the year 2200. Taking a socio-constructionist approach to research and through the analysis of secondary data, it explores current issues and debates concerned with the environment, disasters and depletion of natural resources; social context including movies and entertainment, the media and technology, the evolution of the theme park and cultural transmission; and economical realities, covering poverty vs. world elite and global culture, all of which are seen as drivers of the potential future tourism market. In so doing, it presents a narrative (scenario), provoking the notion that in the year 2200 death and hunting humans will form part of the tourism entertainment industry and a practice carried out by the wealthy-elite, a view backed with substance. It argues, that as a result of past and current engagements with murder, death and human atrocities, and significantly our relationship with death, humans will gradually become more accustomed to death as a form of spectacle, influenced by current entertainment, movies and the media. Death as entertainment by form of detachment (emotionally and physically) will further influence the future fun aspect of hunting humans. Significantly, changes in our natural environment will lead to great challenges, lack of water, depleted food resources and greater disparity between the wealthy and impoverished; all of which will drive the change in our humanly existence. This papers aims to provide a provocative account of the ‘potential future meaning of tourism’, through the application of current knowledge, and significantly, it is our relationship with death and violence that are central, death and violence are becoming diluted and thus, will be a source of future entertainment and a tourism activity – in less humans can reach a level of transcendence that has never been present, to transcend the culture they have created, one that has always witnessed violence as a means to survival. If violence can be detached then we will be presented with a ‘wild card’, a future that is truly out of this world.