Tourism, Security and Safety

Yoel Mansfeld, Abraham Pizam, Yoel Mansfeld, Abraham Pizam

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781136352713
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Economics
• Categoría: Microeconomics

The topic of safety and security in the tourism industry is of vital importance globally. In recent years, and mainly after the 9/11 event, both academics and practitioners have started to look into crisis management issues seeking workable solutions in order to mitigate the negative impacts of safety and security incidences on the tourism industry and affected destinations.
Tourism, Safety and Security: a multi dimensional analysis brings together the writings of international leading academics and practitioners in this field to discuss prevention measures and crisis management options, in incidences of tourism safety and security. The layout and content of the book are aimed at analyzing different types of safety and security problems as well as finding managerial strategies and tactics to address them. Divided into four sections this book looks at:
· Tourism and security issues: including the impact of terror in the hotel market in Israel
· Tourism and crime issues: including premises liability, drug trafficking, theft and street robbery
· Tourism and safety Issues: including the impact of SARS in Asia and Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK
· Tourism crisis management issues: including the 9/11 crisis, public relations, and the aftermath of the Bali bombings Each chapter has a user friendly structure including study objectives, concept definitions and review questions.

1 Toward a Theory of Tourism Security

Abraham Pizam and Yoel Mansfeld

DOI: 10.4324/9780080458335-1

Learning Objectives

• To understand the process of theory building in the field of tourism security.
• To understand the importance of theory building as part of developing appropriate strategies to control the negative impacts security incidents have on the tourism system.
• To become acquainted with the fundamentals of tourism security theory.
• To become familiar with the nature of security incidents.
• To understand the array of impact security incidents have on tourists, the tourism industry, and the host community.
• To become aware of future research directions needed in order to refine or redefine tourism security theory.

Introduction

Bailey (1982, p. 39) defines theory as “an attempt to explain a particular phenomenon.” In his opinion, to be valid a theory must: “predict and explain a phenomenon and be testable, at least ultimately” (Bailey, 1982, p. 40). Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to start the process of crafting a “tourism security” theory by constructing its first two building blocks, namely the statement of concepts and propositions.

It is expected that by the time this theory is completed it should be able to answer the following questions:

• Why incidents of security such as crime, terrorism, wars, riots, and civil unrest exist at tourist destinations;
• What are the motives of the perpetrators/offenders;
• What are the impacts of such incidents on the tourists, the tourism industry, the destination, and the community at large;
• How do the tourism industry, the tourists, the destination, the media, and the community react to the crises caused by such incidents;
• What effective recovery methods can be undertaken by the public and private sectors at the destination;
• What methods of prevention or reduction of such incidents can be used by the destination in order to avoid or minimize the impacts of future security crises?

A successful theory will provide explanations and predictions of the phenomenon of “tourism security” by relating some of its components (i.e., the variables of crimes, terrorism, war, riots) to some other phenomena (e.g., the variables of tourism demand, offenders’ motivation, victims’ behavior, opportunity, location, etc.). Though the ultimate aim of such a theory would be to state the relationship between these phenomena in causal terms (e.g., increased rates of crimes against tourists causes a decrease in tourist visitation), in the immediate future this theory would at best suggest only the direction of the hypothesized relationships (e.g., a negative direction indicates that the higher the crime rates at a tourist destination, the lower the tourist arrivals, whereas a positive direction indicates that the more uniformed police officers are visible at the tourist destination, the more secure tourists feel about the destination).

As suggested by Bailey (1982, p. 40) the first two steps in theory construction are the statement of concepts and the writing of one or more propositions. “Concepts are…mental images or perceptions…they may be impossible to observe directly,” such as fear of being robbed in the case of tourism security, “or they may have referents that are readily observable,” such as a gun or knife in the case of tourism security. “On the other hand, many concepts contain several categories, values, or subconcepts, often falling along a recognizable dimension or continuum,” such as the number of tourist related robberies in a given year. “Concepts that can take on more than one value along a continuum are called variables” (Bailey, 1982, p. 40).

Propositions are “statements about one or more concepts or variables.” Subtypes of propositions include “hypotheses, empirical generalizations, axioms, postulates, and theorems.” Hypotheses are propositions that are “stated in a testable form and predict a particular relationship between two (or more) variables. In other words, if we think that a relationship exists, we first state it as a hypothesis and then test the hypothesis in the field” (Bailey, 1982, p. 40). “In contrast to a hypothesis, an empirical generalization is a relationship that represents an exercise in induction. Rather than hypothesizing that a relationship exists and then testing this hypothesis, an empirical generalization is a statement of relationship that is constructed by first observing the existence of a relationship (in one or a few instances) and then generalizing to say that the observed relationship holds in all cases (or most cases)” (Bailey, 1982, pp. 41–42).

For the purpose of constructing a tourism security theory, empirical generalizations rather than hypotheses were developed in this chapter because by now researchers have had the opportunity to observe numerous tourism security crises throughout the world and have examined their impacts on the tourists, the destinations, and the tourism industry. Furthermore, in the aftermath of these incidents, researchers also managed to study and scrutinize the effectiveness of various recovery and prevention methods that were put in place by the affected destinations. This enables suggesting a group of empirical generalizations that will ultimately lead to the crafting of a comprehensive theory that will predict and explain the tourism security phenomenon.

The following sections will list and define the various concepts of this theory and put forward a set of propositions stated in the form of empirical generalizations.

Tourism and Security: Concepts and Their Respective Variables

To formulate and construct the basis for a theory of tourism security it is necessary, first, to define the major concepts that are derived from the relationship between tourism and security incidents. Once these concepts and their respective variables are defined they will lay the foundations for the theoretical development of over eighty propositions, stated in the form of empirical generalizations.

In the next section we define the relevant concepts and their corresponding variables, grouped by common subjects.

In recent years the theoretical discourse on the relationship between tourism and security has been conducted around three main groups of concepts and their derived variables. These groups are:

• Group A: Concepts relating to the nature of tourism-related security incidents and crises (including types, causes, mode of operation, motives, targets, etc.);
• Group B: Concepts relating to the impacts of security incidents and crises on the tourism industry, the tourists, and host communities;
• Group C: Concepts relating to the short-, medium-, and long-term reactions of all tourism stakeholders to existing and potential security incidents and crises.

A Typology of Tourism Security Concepts and Variables

Based on the grouping of concepts proposed above, we propose the following concepts and their corresponding variables.

Group A: The Nature of Tourism-Related Security Incidents and Crises

Types of Security Incidents

The first and perhaps the most fundamental concept to be discussed under this group is the type of security incident that affects tourism. This concept’s centrality stems from its substantial influence on its potential impact on tourism. So far, the literature dealing with these interrelations identified four major types of security incidents that triggered some form of negative impact on the host communities, the tourism industry, and the tourists themselves. The four possible generators of a given security situation that might harmfully impinge on the tourism system are: crime-related incidents, terrorism, war, and civil/political unrest.

Crime-related incidents can be in the form of:

• Larceny;
• Theft;
• Robbery;
• Rape;
• Murder;
• Piracy; and
• Kidnapping.

These crime-related incidents may take place in various scenarios, such as crimes committed by local residents against tourists; crimes committed by tourists against local residents; crimes committed by tourists against other tourists; and organized crime against tourism enterprises.

Terrorism can take the form of:

• Domestic terrorism;
• International terrorism; and
• Cross-border terrorism.

The relationship between tourism and terrorism can be manifested in three possible scenarios: Terrorism that is aimed at civil targets yet sometimes victimizes tourists as well; terrorism that is directed at economic targets that are functionally related to tourism; and finally, terrorism that targets tourism and/or tourists since both are regarded as “soft targets” with relatively high-impact media coverage.

Wars, either full-scale or limited to a given region, have also had major impacts on tourist demand, both for the involved countries as well as on global tourist flows. The outbreak of wars, unlike terror activities, tends to have a negative tourism impact on larger areas and for a longer period of time. Historically, the types of wars that have been found to have an impact on tourism are:

• Cross-border wars;
• Trans-border wars;
• Wars of attrition; and
• Civil wars.

Civil and/or political unrest can be in the form of:

• Coup d’état;
• Violent demonstrations;
• Uprising; and
• Riots.

The above incidents have caused major declines in tourism demand in various parts of the world. Whether it is a coup d’état in Fiji, violent demonstrations against the Group of Seven nations (G7) in several different venues, the uprising of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, or riots in the Chiapas region of Mexico, such incidents paralyzed or severely impacted the local tourism industry as a result of trip cancellation behavior and a shift of bookings to safer alternative destinations.

Frequency of Security Incidents

Empirical evidence so far shows that the higher the frequency of such incidents and the more media coverage they obtain, the greater the negative impact on tourist demand. A high frequency of security incidents causes changes in tourists’ booking and cancellation behavior, selective spatial behavior in the affected destination, and other tourism demand characteristics. The frequency of security incidents is usually measured by the following variables:

• Number of security incidents in a given period of time; and
• Scaled frequency pattern within a given period of time.

Motives and Targets of Security Incidents

As previously indicated, to predict the impacts that security incidents have on tourism, it is imperative to understand the motives behind such incidents. An in-depth study of these motives could provide valuable information on potential targets. A greater understanding of this cause and effect relationship can lead to more effective contingency and mitigation plans for affected destinations. Thus, the variables most often used to detect goals and targets are:

• Types of (declared or undeclared) motives;
  • Political;
  • Religious;
  • Social;
  • Economic;
  • Hostility to tourists;
  • Publicity seeking; and
  • Destruction of an area’s economy.
• Types of (declared or undeclared) targets;
  • Tourists on the way to and from their travel destinations;
  • Tourists vacationing in a given travel destination;
  • Tourism and hospitality installations and facilities;
  • Strategic and non-strategic transportation facilities serving tourists; and
  • Public and private services and businesses also serving tourists.

Severity of Security Incidents

The evidence so far shows that the impact of security incidents on tourism, tourists, and hosts is directly correlated with the severity of the incidents. Although it is difficult to objectively define the levels of severity of security incidents, we propose the following variables that can be used as measurement scales:

• Extent of overall damage to tourism properties caused by security incidents;
• Extent of damage to private sector tourism properties caused by security incidents;
• Extent of damage to public sector tourism properties caused by security incidents; and
• Extent of damage to life caused by security incidents.

Location

Understanding the geographical dimension of security incidents is of great importance when handling security related tourism crises. Host governments and the tourism industry will do their utmost to ensure that the impacts of security incidents will be confined to the location where the security incident actually took place, and will not spill over to other locations. Mapping the relationship between the location where the security incident occurred and the tourist destination may result in three main situations. The first is when the security location and the tourist destination overlap. The second is when there is a geographical proximity between these two locations. The third situation is when those two locations are far apart. It is assumed that the closer the two locations, the more severe would be the impact of the security incident on the tourism industry. However, this statement sometimes tends to oversimplify the relationship between location and severity of impact on the tourism industry. For example, in some cases,...