Reviewing the Literature

Introduction

This chapter provides the reader with several challenges. Not only is there no one single definition of what is tourism security, but there is also no single accepted definition of who is a tourism security expert or professional working within the field. There is also a wide range of definitions for tourism policing. There is no single definition of what a tourism-policing unit is or of what (or whom) it should consist. This diversity is also reflected in the diverse nature of the tourism policing literature.

Another reason that the literature lacks uniformity regarding tourism policing is that the field must borrow from a wide range of other disciplines and topics. Included among the disciplines are criminology, psychology, sociology, and tourism science. Topics that impact the field of tourism policing include: convention center security, crimes against tourists, crowd control, hotel and lodging security, protection of stadiums, risk management, transportation, and terrorism.

Additionally, tourism is a broad term that covers a great many forms of travel. The field of tourism ranges from the individual traveler, for leisure and business, group tourism, and event tourism. Issues of security range from land travel to air and sea travel. Finally, there is a wide range of people who travel and many of these visitors belong to groups that have special needs regarding tourism security. Among these “special needs” groups are: athletes and sports groups, business travelers, families traveling with small children, older and retired travelers, single women travelers (refers to a woman traveling alone, not her marital status), and religious or pilgrimage travelers. Additionally, a person may fit into more than one of these groupings during the same trip. Each of these sub-groupings also is reflected in the tourism security literature.

To help the reader navigate through this labyrinth, we can divide the literature into various types of sub-divisions. For example, we can examine the literature dealing with:

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  Articles and books that address the specific topic of tourism policing.

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  The specific literature that addresses tourism security issues rather than tourism policing.

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  Foreign language articles and books on either tourism policing or security that would present useful paradigms to an American audience.

Through this chapter we loosely use the terms “tourism policing” or “tourism security professionals” to refer to anyone working in the field of tourism security. No matter if the tourism security agent is in public or private service we assume that the person will gain from the “tourism policing” literature and is placed under the rubric of tourism policing.

A great deal of the tourism policing and security literature comes does not come from books or academic article but rather from articles of a journalistic nature. There are many possibilities for this lack of formal literature, but perhaps the best hypothesis is that the tourism industry over the decades has tended to downplay issues of tourism security and policing. Some of the possible reasons for this dearth of articles may be:

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  Because the industry is dominated by marketers these people may simply be less interested in the subject than in other parts of the tourism industry,

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  Tourism officials might fear that too many tourism security articles could frighten visitors,

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  Some tourism officials sincerely believe that good marketing can solve most, if not all, problems. Thus, from their perspective, the less spent on tourism policing or security the better the more they have for marketing.

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  For a number of years there was a belief that much of tourism crime is a reaction to the visitor’s wealth or behavior. For example, in The Effect of Tourism on Crime in Italy: A Dynamic Panel Approach (Biagi, Brandano & Detotto, 2012) the authors (Bianca Biagi, Maria Giovanna Brandano, and Claudio Detotto) ask the question “why do tourism areas in Italy have higher rates of crime?” Following Fuji and Mak (1980) they answer that many reasons can be found for higher crime rates including the facts that:

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  Tourists carry valuable objects and money; the attitude of holidaymakers is more imprudent;

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  Tourists are “safer” targets for criminals because they rarely report crime to the police;

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  The presence of tourists alters the local environment,

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  Ryan (1990) and Kelly (1993) add that in some cases crime is driven by demand for illegal good or services in destinations.