Feeling and tourism studies

• Attention to theories of emotions, affects and senses can strengthen tourism studies.
• Discussion on dark tourism literature unravels the tourism-conflict-danger nexus.
• We examine emotional and affectual geographies in Jordanian and Palestinian sites.
• We theorise danger-zone tourism as emotional, sensuous and affectual performance.

Drawing on critical social and spatial theories of emotion and affect this article offers a contribution to the concepts of danger-zone and dark tourism through a focus on feelings. Research findings on tourism in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the West Bank (of the river Jordan) in Palestine are presented to argue that exciting challenges are available to tourism research when closer attention is given to the embodied emotionality of tourist places in areas of ongoing socio-political conflict. The article discusses the conceptual implications when attention turns to emotions and affects, and then describes how tourists and tour guides feel in areas of ongoing conflict. Considering emotions, affects and feelings opens up new research avenues for tourism studies.