Semblances of ‘War Tourism’ in Sarajevo, Post-2005

War creates negative place images, so cities, regions and countries often attempt to (re) create an image after tragic events. In some cases, post-war, a place will use the recent events as a way of educating tourists. After turbulent events cities often attempt to create a new image and fade memories of war and focus on the future as a means of removing the negative imaginations associating a place with its past. Sarajevo has often been referred to as a ‘War Tourism’ destination and this paper critically assesses the city in relation to destination image of war tourism since 2005. After the war ended, people associated Sarajevo with war, so the city strategically attempted to embrace this part of their recent history as a way of educating visitors about what really happened and not only what was presented to the outside world through the media. The purpose of the following commentary is to revisit the focus of tourism in Sarajevo ten years after the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords until present day. Newspaper content from international (English language) newspapers were used to excavate content on articles discussing, Sarajevo, war and tourism. The analysis section acknowledges that emphasis is still put on ‘war tourism in Sarajevo.’ As the discussion section will highlight, post-conflict, destinations can be conceptualized as being ‘permanent’ or ‘temporary’ war tourism destinations. It is important to recognize future directions concerning how tourism managers want to replace and fade memories of war in an attempt to revert back to the city’s former image-as an ideal place where different groups resided together.