There are an increasing plethora of sites associated with death, tragedy or the macabre that have become significant tourist ‘attractions’. As a result, the term ‘dark tourism’ has entered academic discourse. However, dark tourism literature is both eclectic and theoretically fragile. This is especially the case with regards to consumption and its implications for understanding the ‘dark tourist’. Thus it is suggested that the dimensions of dark tourism consumption have not been extracted or interrogated – only assumed. Consequently, with death and the nature of dying at the crux of the dark tourism concept, this article calls for the development of consumer behaviour models, which incorporate contemporary socio-cultural aspects of death and dying. It is suggested that this in turn will lead to a better understanding of consumer motives within the dark tourism domain.