A netnographic examination of visitor perception of the ghost city of Varosha in Famagusta, Cyprus

Once a thriving tourist destination, the Varosha quarter of the city of Famagusta has remained abandoned and fenced off since the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, symbolising the island's ongoing political division. Its partial reopening in 2020, after almost five decades of abandonment, has sparked renewed national and international interest, raising questions around memory, heritage and tourism in contested, post-conflict contexts. This study explores how visitors perceive and interpret Varosha through online narratives, and how these perceptions contribute to the area's evolving identity as a dark tourism destination. The research employs a triangulated methodology, combining netnographic analysis of user-generated content (in this case from Tripadvisor), empirical field observations and theoretical frameworks from dark tourism and digital heritage studies to identify and interpret key themes and sentiments. The analysis reveals five dominant thematic categories, namely, tour, town, war, guide, and border, while visitors express a spectrum of emotions – from curiosity and sorrow to nostalgia and ethical discomfort. The obtained reviews also function as digital testimonies, placing tourists as agents of collective memory. The findings highlight the significance of digital platforms in shaping post-conflict narratives and underscore the need for ethically informed heritage management. Furthermore, the research is contextualized within broader discussions of heritage tourism, memory, and the politics of space, underscoring the value of online discourse in understanding contemporary reactions to historical sites and contributes to the emerging field of digital heritage studies. By doing so, this research addresses a current gap in knowledge and research concerning netnographic research and visitor perception of the Ghost City of Varosha in divided Cyprus, while contributing a novel methodological approach to digital tourism research in divided societies.