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Urban centres encompass a variety of tourist attractions. To expand these offerings, the opportunities must recognize the temporal and spatial constraints of travel. Temporally a night-time economy can fuel visitation and has traditionally been centered on entertainment, food and drinking establishments. The former has broad appeal to all visitors while the latter are more attractive options for the young and fearless. Spatially, to attract a broader audience of visitors, one most overcome the fear of the night so important in family friendly opportunities. Following the examples in several cities, the commodification of dark tourism themes has been shown to encourage family visitation, despite the macabre theme of the attractions. For the purpose of this study, an assessment of common fears is asked of night-time tourists as they prepare to enter an urban haunted attraction. The attraction is promoted to scare the guest but at the same time, expected to be safe. In this manner we begin to understand the dual nature of fear (i.e. repel vs attract) evident in night-time tourism experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic geographic studies in tourism should consider the liminality of the experience. Tourism by definition means a temporal and/or spatial movement takes place. How the tourist interacts and behaves during this transitory experience is a logical progression into human leisure behaviour. Several recent international gatherings of geographers provide the foundation to explore liminality in tourism and we build on those papers in this special issue. The papers are varied in geographies, yet have a central theoretical basis in all things liminal. Invited papers in this special issue are founded on the research presented at two international geography conferences in sessions devoted to tourism. The American Association of Geographers meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in 2017 and the Royal Geographic Society with the Institute of British Geographers in Cardiff, Wales in 2018 gathered geographers from around the world to study this theme. The following papers give the most comprehensive geographic review in tourism to date and we encourage additional dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]