Providing Safety for Tourists: A Study of a Selected Sample of Tourist Destinations in the United States and Brazil

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners alike have assumed that tourism security professionals play a key role in the success of the tourism industry. This article seeks to compare three U.S. tourism cities with three Brazilian cities to determine what role culture plays in the way that police departments work with the tourism industry. Through the use of comparative taxonomies, the authors introduce the notion of a safety continuum. They argue that the classical notion held by safety experts that tourists seek a secure environment may be only one side of a business continuum. Another possibility is that tourism and law enforcement seek to deny any problems of violence. This article builds on a previous study published in the Journal of Travel Research by Pizam, Tarlow, and Bloom.