Death in paradise: Tourist fatalities in the tsunami disaster in Thailand

The topic of death of tourists on. their trip has not been treated in tourism, studies. This article departs from the prevailing approach to death in contemporary thanatological studies and focuses upon die specific issue involved in tourist death. It conceives the common characteristics of tourist deaths and raises some basic sociological questions regarding the treatment of tourist fatalities in a major disaster. It examines those questions in a case study of the retrieval, and identification of dead tourists in the tsunami disaster in southern Thailand.