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Touring Katrina: Authentic Identities

and Disaster Tourism in New Orleans
Devon Robbie

Department of Anthropology , Tulane University , New

Orleans, LA, USA
Published online: 19 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Devon Robbie (2008) Touring Katrina: Authentic Identities and
Disaster Tourism in New Orleans, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 3:4, 257-266, DOI:
10.1080/17438730802366557
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17438730802366557

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Touring Katrina: Authentic Identities and

Disaster Tourism in New Orleans

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Devon Robbie
Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA
Following hurricane Katrina in 2005, concern was expressed over the future of the
tourism industry in New Orleans. Tourism and residents returned more quickly
than predicted by naysayers, yet there was further controversy over certain disaster
or Katrina tours that soon began to take place. Questions were raised about the motivation of tour companies and tourists and about the rights of residents whose
destroyed homes were main attractions on the tours. Beyond this controversy, the
routes and narratives of the tours themselves illuminate lines of division in preand post-Katrina New Orleans and the selection of certain sites, like the
Convention Center, reflects the pervasive influence of images in the national media.
The individual performances of the tour guides and the way in which they utilised
unique discourses of authenticity also raise questions about what it means to be a
local of New Orleans and how this has changed with the storm. While by 2008 traditional tourism has largely returned to or surpassed pre-Katrina levels, some
Katrina tours still operate, pointing to the continued place for disaster tourism in contemporary society. These issues resonate with the themes identity, authenticity, and
ownership found in other research on cultural and heritage tourism.

doi: 10.1080/17438730802366557
Keywords: authenticity, disaster, identity, tourism, cultural heritage

Introduction
Owing to the anomalous nature of disaster, tourism to sites of such occurrences appears to be a phenomenon that stands apart from other types of heritage tourism that are based on longstanding traditions and celebrated historical
moments. Yet, tourism tied to natural or human-made disaster is intrinsically
related to the history of a location and the traditions or culture of the people
who live there. In fact, in many ways it is the human costs of such events,
rather than the purely physical aspects of destruction, that make them fascinating to the public.
In this article, disaster tourism is used to designate tourism to sites of natural
and human-made disasters, like Hurricane Katrina and 911. There has been
attention to both types of sites, including studies of disaster tourism in
Southeast Asia following the 2004 tsunami (Slayton, 2006) and work investigating the role of tourism, commercialism and commemoration at Ground
Zero in New York (Hurley & Trimarco, 2004). A newer term, grief tourism, is
also used to describe many of these situations. While it has a similar
meaning to disaster tourism, its usage also encompasses tourism to sites of

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smaller scale tragedies, like murders, and places a greater emphasis on the
motivation or emotions of those involved (Trotta, 2006).
Thanatourism is another term that can be applied to such instances, as well as to
a wider spectrum of historical practice. Thanatourism has been defined as
tourism motivated by a desire to visit places of death, atrocity, disaster and
other forms of human suffering (Timothy & Boyd, 2006, p. 7), whereas Seaton
(1999, p. 133) identified it as tourism motivated by the desire for actual
or symbolic encounters with death. Seaton (1996, 1999) created a schema of
degrees of thanatourism, reaching from being an actual witness to death, such
as being present at a public execution, to traveling to sites of battlefields and memorials and to visiting museums or monuments that have a symbolic focus on death.
Dark tourism is another term in use. Lennon and Foley (2000) are considered
to be the first to use this term and their work addresses historical and contemporary examples of dark tourism in various locations and eras. Stone (2006) is
another scholar who studies dark tourism. In his work, he also created a typology of shades of darkness that characterise different examples of dark tourism
(Stone, 2006) and identified similarities between these examples.
To understand how disaster or dark tourism is a form of heritage tourism, it is
helpful to look to studies that discuss the latter. Timothy and Boyd (2006, p. 2)
define heritage tourism as a form of travel [that] entails visits to sites of historical
importance . . . locations where historic events occurred, and places where interesting and significant cultures stand out. Their discussion of heritage as a
present day use of the past (Timothy & Boyd, 2006, p. 2) is especially relevant
to the study of post-Katrina tourism. Conceptualising heritage in this manner
provides an explanation of how an abstract timeline of events, often no longer
visible on the landscape, is transformed into a series of sites on the Katrina tours.
Authenticity is also an important theme that has a long history in the anthropology of tourism. Early discussions, often taking the form of arguments about
the essential authenticity or inauthenticity of certain forms of tourism, form a
large part of the work of scholars of tourism including MacCannell (1976),
Nash (1989), Burns (1999) and Urry (2002). Eventually scholarship moved
away from qualitative uses of the term and turned instead to how ideas of authenticity function within the context of tourism (Chambers, 2000).
The work of Coupland, Garret and Bishop (2005) is an example of this new
approach. In their work they ask how the discourse practices of heritage
tourism events can themselves deploy or invoke notions of authenticity and
how authenticity and inauthenticity are worked into the talk and the texts of
such events (Coupland et al., 2005, p. 199). They emphasise an approach that
follows the premise that authenticity must be a quality of experience constituted discursively (Coupland et al., 2005, p. 202). My analysis utilised this
premise, with the notion of authenticity being constituted by the tour guides
performances of a local New Orleanian and hurricane eye-witness identity in
the discourse of the tour narrations.

The Katrina Tour and the Katrina Cruise

This research focuses on two tours or routes through New Orleans, the Gray
Line Katrina bus tour and the John James Audubon Riverboat Katrina Cruise

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Authentic Identities and Disaster Tourism in New Orleans

259

following Hurricane Katrina of August 2005. The majority of this research was
completed during the spring and summer of 2006 and continued over the following year. In this time, I went on five Gray Line and Riverboat tours over 6
months, from January to July 2006. During the tours I compared the individual
guides presentations and observed the changes that took place in the tour over
time as the events of the Hurricane became less visible on the landscape of the
city. My methods included participant observation, formal interviews and
informal conversations with tourists and tour guides. Along with formal interviews, I audiotaped the tours taken and later transcribed large sections of the
interviews and the tour narrations. This, along with a study of related advertising, highlighted the discourse of the tours and of disaster tourism.
Both tour companies had operated in New Orleans before the storm,
meaning that they and their workers had a prior experience with cultural
tourism in New Orleans. The international Gray Line Company operates
numerous bus and walking tours of the city and the Audubon riverboat
gives passengers a tour of the Mississippi, as it brings them between the city
zoo and aquarium. The Gray Line disaster tour began in January 2006, and
the Katrina Cruise began immediately after. Each tour had a standardised
route, which included areas of residential and municipal destruction and
sites emphasised by the media, such as the Superdome on the bus tours and
the Lower Ninth Ward on the river boat tour. Both tours also provided a
basic timeline of events of the storm and included anecdotes about New
Orleans history, details of rebuilding efforts and political and environmental
messages about the future of the city and the state.
Initially, the existence of these tours attracted attention in the international
media with articles like Bus line debuts tour of stricken New Orleans
(Wulfhorst, 2006) and Bus tour aims to rally support for New Orleans
(Tiecher, 2006). These titles reflect the two main themes found in the articles,
which interposed a view of the tours as garish or macabre with others that presented the tours as a resilient and necessary response to the storm. These two
viewpoints are based on questions about the motivations of tourists, the right
of victims to privacy and the ethical implications of profiting from human
suffering.
Despite this controversy, the tours attracted a relatively large number of
tourists. According to one Gray Line guide that I interviewed, the popularity
of the Katrina tours were what kept the company in business in the early
stages after the storm. While some early tourists were international visitors,
some were people from the area who were trying to see parts of the city they
did not yet have access to. A few months later, many of the tours were filled
with long-time vacationers or former residents of New Orleans, hoping to
see if the city they remembered was still visible. Other tours held groups of
volunteers that had come from other damaged areas of the Gulf Coast. Fewer
tourists took the river boat tour, causing it to close in May 2006. As more
familiar tourism returns to the city, the bus tours continue to run twice daily,
arguably becoming as much of a required experience of a trip to New
Orleans as the ubiquitous cemetery and ghost tours.
These tours were by no means the only instances of disaster tourism in New
Orleans following Katrina. There were other formal Katrina tours given as well

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as much informal viewing of damaged areas and tours given specifically to visiting officials and volunteers. In fact, the interest in volunteering has been
described as a form of volunteer tourism, especially as many school groups
come to the city to volunteer on their spring breaks. Even before Katrina,
historical disasters were included in the tourist landscape of the city, including
Hurricane Camille of 1969, the cholera epidemic of 1853 and the Great New
Orleans fire that destroyed the French Quarter in 1788. In many ways, the
Katrina tours are in keeping with a tradition of macabre or dark themes in
New Orleans tourism, epitomised in the popular vampire, graveyard and
ghost tours of the city.

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Authenticity and Narrative

A study of the Katrina tours shows how a local New Orleanian identity is
constructed within the discourse of the tours and the New Orleans heritage
tourism industry as a whole. It also comments on issues of identity and
representation in heritage tourism research. In the tours studied, identity, in
the figure of the local tour guide, was used to symbolise the authenticity, and
hence value, of the tours and the experience they provided. These kinds of
questions are relevant to other articles in this issue, which discuss related
motifs of authenticity and processes through which identities are differentially
valued and manipulated in the context of tourism.
Advertisements for the tours provide an introduction to the themes found
in the discourse of the tour narrations. It is important to look at this detail
because advertising is one space in which discourses of authenticity, especially
those in which authenticity equals value, are prevalent in heritage tourism contexts. In keeping with this trend, the identity of the guides as locals and as
Hurricane witnesses and survivors is placed at the forefront in brochures and
web sites advertising the tours. The Gray Line Company promises that the
tour is narrated by licensed tour guides who are local New Orleanians with
their own personal accounts of Hurricane Katrina, whereas the Katrina
Cruise advertised that tourists will sail with Captains and Native New
Orleans Crews who survived the storm. In the advertisements, the identity
of the tour guides and their experiences with the hurricane are featured by
the tour company as positive advertising for the tours. These identities are presented almost as the guides credentials, something that will ensure an authentic experience for those who choose to purchase a tour.
In the discourse of these performances, each guide created and embodied a
unique identity. What ties each of these identities together was the guides
identification of themselves as locals of New Orleans and therefore as a legitimate people to present and represent the city. Another thread that runs between
these identities is Hurricane Katrina itself. Being a local of New Orleans now
generally implies having had an experience with the Hurricane. This is
reflected in the guides inclusion of their personal storm stories in the narrations of their tours, highlighting the element of survivor or eye-witness of
Katrina in their identities.
The structural similarities between the tours facilitated comparison of the
narrations on the tours given by the different guides. Through the transcripts

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261

made of the tours it was possible to access this discourse in a textual format.
While both sections, scripted and unscripted, conveyed similar messages
about authenticity and local identity, these narrations create an arena where
identity can be contested between the tour guides and tour companies providing the script. While on all the tours the guides emphasised their local identities, they in no way presented a unified picture of what a New Orleans local
should be. Differences in their identities included those of age, race, personality
and neighbourhood affiliation.
The majority of analysis of the tour guides narrations was based on the
transcripts of the tours. In these texts, authenticity is clearly an underlying
theme or discourse. By emphasising their identity as locals, the tour guides
symbolised the people of New Orleans and a culture that was as much of an
attraction on the tour as the gutted houses. In the tour narrations this local identity validated the authenticity of both the information given by the tour guide
and the actual experience of the tour for the tourist. Yet, as much as each of
these narrations shared an emphasis on a local identity, they also shared similarly strong markers of individuality found in each version of a local identity.
Individual personalities and the part of the city they identified themselves as
living in or being from are two characteristics that set many of the guides
apart from each other. For example, Sallys (all names have been changed)
style was flamboyant and she emphasised her identity as a French Quarter resident, whereas William was more soft spoken and also expressed great pride in
the cultural heritage of his former home, the Lower Ninth Ward.
Statements about authenticity, with this characteristic embodied in individual identity, were made frequently by the tour guides. For example, William
from the Katrina Cruise said, in a personal interview, that the media cant
get the feeling through like I can because Im a local. This statement expresses
an underlying assumption, important for the operation of heritage tourism, that
there are aspects of cultural traditions and past events that can best be communicated by people of that culture or by one who has witnessed the events.
Another statement, we had no idea what was happening on the outskirts of
my city here, part of Sallys narration on her Gray Line Tour, also emphasised
her identity as a local. Statements such as these form the basis of the argument
in which the guides assert themselves as locals and as uniquely qualified to
provide the tourist with an authentic experience.
Insider knowledge about local culture and individual memories were
included in the narrations as further assurance of each guides local identity.
For example, William informed the tour group, Soul foods only good if its
cooked with pots that are burned on the bottom. Miss Jordon had the most
famous restaurant in the 9th Ward, used pots that were burned on the
bottom. Now that restaurant is totally gone. While many of the statements discussed previously, evidenced in part by their frequent repetition, were a part of
the scripted sections of the tour, these anecdotes appeared to be unscripted, at
least by the tour company. This provided an element of spontaneity and individual character to each guides performance which arguably added to
claims of authenticity.
Along with cultural knowledge, personal anecdotes, especially childhood
stories, were also found in the narrations. Passing the remains of a flooded

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house, William shared over the boats loudspeaker, Now I grew up here. Every
day we had football practice wed pass that sweet shop, buy Twinkies and
candies and wind up at football practice with a tummy-ache. Wed always go
to Miss Rudolph, thats her home. Its totally demolished, on our right side.
Memories of restaurants or parks that were no longer there also functioned
to create an imagined landscape on the tours. Stories like these acted as a
present use of the past (Timothy & Boyd, 2006, p. 2) and figured into the creation of a landscape of layered time presented to the tourists.
The individual experiences that the guides had during and after the
Hurricane were also featured in the tours. Some stories were relatively
simple. For example, Tim from the Gray Line tour related that, I rode out
the storm in my home . . . with my roommate and my parents. In contrast
other tales were more elaborate and at times hilarious, in keeping with the
guides general style. In her tour, Sally provided an example of the latter:
Now I live in a hundred-and-seventy-year-old home, so you bet your
bottom dollar I didnt stay there . . . I went and did something we call a vertical
evacuation. That means that I went to one of these tall buildings, a very wellknown hotel . . . That is why I know when the storm rolled through and what
happened afterwards. In this excerpt, Sally emphasised both her identity as
a local and as a Hurricane eye-witness. Through the retelling of her experiences
during the Hurricane, she asserts that she is qualified to provide tourists authentic or true information about the events of the storm.
Other stories dealt more with personal loss and the emotional aftereffects of
the Hurricane. For example, on the Katrina Cruise, William recounted places
and people he had, himself, lost. During the tour he said, theres my grandmothers house . . . the water came in and washed it all away and in fact a
friend of mine did not leave . . . they found her body a few months ago, she
did not survive, as the boat passed the respective sites of these tragedies.
These statements, though not directly placing William in the role of eyewitness, do emphasise his connections to the city and the events of Hurricane
Katrina. This emphasis makes a slightly different claim to authenticity; one supported less by factual, direct information about events during the Hurricane, as
by the costs and experiences of a local following the Hurricane. A similar claim
to authenticity is made, but it is an authenticity more closely tied to authentic
emotions and feelings, rather than simply true information. William further
backed up this claim, stating at the beginning of the tour that It may also be
a very personal narration as all of us on board [he and the crew] are victims
of Katrina. With this statement he asserts the authenticity of the tour experience
through the closeness to people, the guide and the crew, who have experienced
the Hurricane in this firsthand way.
As these examples demonstrate, there were many stylistic variations between
individual Gray Line tours and the Katrina Cruise. Despite having different
emphases, all of the tour guides performances interacted with an underlying
ideal of authenticity. On the Katrina tours, these performances demonstrated
the range of ways to be a local of New Orleans and to situate oneself in relation
to the events of the Hurricane. For example, on the Katrina Cruise the local
identity claimed by the guide William was closely tied to a specific area
of the city, the Ninth Ward, while on the Gray Line tour the local identities

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Authentic Identities and Disaster Tourism in New Orleans

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performed were connected with a larger area of the city and the surrounding
region. This difference also included a racial aspect; as the Ninth Ward is
generally connected to African American culture in New Orleans and Robert
and many of the crew of the Katrina Cruise were African Americans, while
many of the Gray Line tour guides were white. This difference interacts with
deeper issues in New Orleans heritage tourism, including debates over the
authentic culture of the city.
While differences in regional focus were due to the guides own decisions,
they were also an aspect of the narrations tied to exigencies of the routes and
transportation of the tour. The Gray Line tours covered the larger area of the
city available to their buses, whereas the Katrina Cruise mainly focussed on
the Ninth Ward and other sites visible from the Mississippi river. These specific
differences can be understood as one of the points of intersection between
the tour companies, city ordinances and the desires and backgrounds of the
tour guides. Variations were also found in the way that the guides situated
themselves in relation to the Hurricane itself, whether focusing on factual,
eye-witness accounts of their whereabouts and experiences during the storm
or on the consequences and losses suffered following the storm. This aspect,
though probably regulated in part by the tour company, reflected a more personal decision based on the guides overarching style and specifics of their
actual experiences. Each of these varied performances though was utilised to
demonstrate the legitimacy of their identity as a local.
By performing the identity of a New Orleans local and a Hurricane witness,
survivor or victim, the tour guides are discursively asserting the authenticity of
the information they are giving to those on the tour and the experience they are
providing. As suggested by Coupland et al. (2005, p. 199) these performances
act as an example of how authenticity and inauthenticity are worked into
the talk and the texts of heritage tourism events. The discourse of the
Katrina tours provide an example of how claims to authenticity are actualised
in heritage tourism.
The prevalence of discussions of authenticity and inauthenticity in this
instance of disaster tourism points to a basic characteristic of heritage
tourism as a whole the equation of value with authenticity. This sets heritage
tourism apart from some other forms of tourism, like the stereotypical sun, sex,
sights, tourism discussed by Crick (1989), in which value is equated with
different characteristics including exclusivity or goods offered. In contrast,
since in heritage tourism the goods being proffered are often in the form of
knowledge about a locations specific history or culture, the importance of authenticity as a value marker is increased. As marks of authenticity are relatively
amorphous and subjective versus the more straightforwardly materialistic
accounting of number of meals included on a cruise, they are often more
fully incorporated into the discourse of heritage tourism events.

Conclusion
Another interesting angle of analysis involves looking more closely at the
guides themselves. Taking on the identity of an eye-witness or victim of a disaster during the tours places the guides in a vulnerable emotional position as

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they recount the events of Katrina, revisit the worst disaster sites and then face
the realities of the post-Katrina New Orleans when they leave work. Many of
these aspects came out in private interviews with individual guides, in
which some were more open with their personal viewpoints and emotions
than they were in the context of the tours. It should be noted though that
some guides were less forthcoming and even reluctant to discuss their
opinion of the Katrina tours. Though the guides did not explain their reluctance, this attitude may have been a reflection of the negative response to the
tours within the city and in the national media.
The emotional reactions discussed above can be observed in the transcript of
a phone interview with the Gray Line guide Lisa. She recounted that, It was a
difficult tour to do in the beginning because nothing was going on. Everyone
who would do the tour had a lump in their throat. Had memories of neighbourhoods vibrant with people, trees. This feeling was echoed by William, in an
informal interview, when he explained, Its hard talking about this stuff,
looking at this stuff. I come back here everyday by my mommas house
which is not there anymore. Along with the difficulties of leading these
tours, interviews with the guides also pointed to the possibility of some level
of catharsis or gradual healing as they watched evidence of the storm fade
from the neighbourhoods and landscapes featured in the tours. As Lisa
described, Now its getting better. Every time you see a place open up it
gives you more hope that things can come back. This feeling was echoed in
Williams thoughts on sifting through the remains of his parents house, I
found some things. Each day I find something I feel a little bit better. Yet, in
another way, these emotions are indicative of a further node of conflict
between the guides and the tour companies; even if the guides do not wish
to revisit these memories or feel uncomfortable doing these tours, they must
do so in order to keep their jobs. For example, speaking with members of the
crew of the Katrina Cruise, on the last day the tour ran, they described how
they were glad that this was the last tour because they found it depressing to
work these tours and expressed the opinion that the tours were exploiting
the pain of the former Ninth Ward residents whose destroyed homes were
being viewed.
While at this time Hurricane Katrina remains a recent occurrence, as time
passes the storm will be remembered or constructed differently in both
tourism and the public imagination. It would be a constructive project to
explore how Katrina-related tourism is manifested in the future, both within
these tours and also in the creation of permanent sites and monuments
related to the events of the storm. Others have investigated the relationship
between disaster tourism and national culture, including Foote (1997), who
explored the pervasive interest in sites of death and destruction in the USA.
Foote (1997, p. 5), in his study of how sites of disaster are treated in the USA,
points to a process of memorialisation, which relates to the larger issue of how
people view violence and tragedy over long periods of time and develop a
sense of their past (Foote, 1997, p. 5). Foote (1997, p. 5) notes the differential
treatment of certain sites, ranging from what he terms sanctification to obliteration. This range can be seen in the development of a Katrina memorial in the
cemetery of Charity Hospital, which underwent severe damage in the storm, to

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the treatment of the Superdome, also the site of tragedy during Katrina, which
has been rebuilt leaving little mark of what occurred.
This study of the Katrina demonstrates the centrality of issues of identity and
representation to studies of heritage tourism and highlights the prevalence of
discourses of authenticity in disaster tourism. The research also shows the
role that culture and history play in instances of disaster tourism and how
forms of disaster or dark tourism are a distinct, but validly classified, part of
heritage tourism studies. As this practice will continue in the future, further
study will be essential in discovering how the identities of those involved are
contested and displayed and how such events interact with larger issues of
social identity and cultural contact.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend a special thanks to my advisor Judith Maxwell, whose
help and advice has been essential to the completion of this project. I would
also like to thank Aline Magnoni and Monica Cable for their tireless efforts
to organise the original panel and find a venue in which these articles could
be published together.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Devon Robbie, 171 Olde Orchard
Lane, Shelburne, VT 05482 (drobbie@tulane.edu).
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