Making Tourists Feel Safe: Whose Responsibility is it?

Abstract

A study of three police authorities in large tourism destinations was conducted to understand how local law enforcement agencies view their responsibility vis-à-vis the tourism industry and whether these agencies deal with crimes against tourists in a differ ent manner than crimes against residents. The results suggest that in all three destinations, law enforcement agencies are seriously committed to preventing and reducing crimes against tourists. To accomplish this, police authorities have set up special units whose sole responsibility is the protection of tourists and have trained selected personnel to deal specifically with tourist matters. The results indicate that not only do these law enforce ment agencies refrain from discriminating against tourists and the tourism industry, but they give this industry preferential treatment and make immense efforts to prevent crimes against tourists.

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