Safety and Tourism

The recent COVID-19 virus outbreak, as well as many other global risks, has put the tourism industry on the brink of collapse. Even if interesting advances have been seen the light of publicity based on risk perception, no less true seems to be that the current theory is not enough to understand and describe the impacts of new global risks that may destroy the industry in question of weeks. This introductory chapter gives a snapshot on the fragile conditions we are moving today and interrogates further the future of tourism.

Since it was adopted from psychology just after the turn of twentieth century, risk perception theory has multiplied and successfully evolved in the fields of tourism research. A dearth of studies has focused on risk perception over the recent decades. We have certainly identified three clear-cut traditions: demographical school, psychological school and critical perspective. With benefits and problems each theory has shed light trying to measure the impact of global risks in the tourism and hospitality industries.

This book keeps the originality to update what has been published in the earlier decades. We are incorporating new topics to the discussion as well as new epistemologies and methodologies. Gathering different high-quality products authored by well-renowned authors coming from different countries, it lays the foundations to a new understanding of risk perception and tourism safety-security debating the next steps and the real challenges posed on the industry in a not so long near future.

The twenty-first century has been characterized by the intensification of concerns related to tourism safety and security. These issues are playing an increasingly significant role over recent years, due to the increase of terrorist attacks in several countries, political instability, natural disasters, epidemics and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding tourist safety and security in the tourism context is, thus, critical to increasing the competitiveness and attractiveness of tourist destinations.

Through the bibliometric methods of performance analysis and science mapping, this study aims to contribute to the advancement of knowledge on tourist safety and security at the destination.

A total of 445 records published between 1989 and 2021, covering 191 academic journals and 1,000 authors from 91 different countries, were analysed.

The main findings show that this research field has attracted a substantial and growing interest of researchers, institutions, journals and countries. Opportunities for future research are related to decision making, tourist behaviour, risk perception, tourism safety, destination image, safety engineering and sustainable development.

In the post-pandemic context, this research field can be critical to providing a set of tailored strategies to improve tourists' safe destination environment and increase tourism destinations' competitiveness and attractiveness.

At least 35 years have passed since Slovic's (1987) seminal article on the ‘Perception of Risk’, wherein the conceptual foundations for understanding general risk and the psychometric properties underlying how individuals perceive risks were laid. Over the same time span, research on risk perception in the context of travel has become voluminous and recurrent. It is therefore fitting that in a modern, post-COVID age, Slovic's theory of risk perception is re-examined in the travel context, given the recent dramatic transformation of travel, the emergence of novel tourism-related risks and persistent scholarly attempts to understand travel risk theory. Using modern data mining methods and content analysis techniques, this chapter examines the stability and validity of long-standing categories and taxonomies of perceived travel risks, based on data archived in a sizeable database of scholarly studies related to travel risk (n = 17,790 studies), across an extensive 35-year period from 1990 to 2022. Findings infer two higher-order dimensions that likely underpin the taxonomic organization and relational ordering of different travel risk types and clusters. Findings also suggest a possible shift from Slovic's original theory in the way risks are perceived, at least in the travel context.

Tourism and crime are closely related phenomena, and security is one of the basic preconditions for the functioning of tourism since tourists and tourist areas have many characteristics that make them vulnerable to crime. In this chapter are presented the actual (objective) risk of crime and tourists victimization, visible in statistics on committed crimes and crime victims surveys, and the perceived (subjective) risk of crime, recorded in surveys conducted with tourists. The characteristics which influence the actual and perceived risk of crime and violence are presented by analysing three key elements in the relationship between tourism and crime: (1) tourist (these characteristics are classified as socio-demographic, socio-cultural and psychological); (2) trip (characteristics are the purpose of the trip, travel party, and stage of the trip); and (3) destination (characteristics are crime rates in destination, the occurrence of crime by place and time, type of accommodation and length of stay).

There is no industry in the world where a crisis caused by terrorism has such a strong impact as in tourism. Providing security for visitors before and during a trip can be a critical success factor for the competitiveness of a particular destination or organization or for business tourism when tourists consider multiple alternatives. Information about political instability, violence, crime or terrorist attacks could cause a substitution effect by tourists. International terrorism and tourism share some characteristics, as both cross national borders, involve citizens from different countries and use the new travel and communications technologies. In recent decades, terrorism organizations have been using tourism targets to gain global visibility. Based on a broad analysis of literature and data, the main goal of this research is to update the work of Seabra (2019) and help to analyse the main connections between terrorism and tourism, specifically by presenting the main terrorist events targeting tourism activity and destinations in the last 35 years and their main consequences for tourism industry.

The scourge of terrorism has situated as one of the major risks and concerns for policy makers and authorities in the Western hemisphere. The attacks to WTC marked not only a first attack in the US soil but the prelude of a set of attacks perpetrated in the European urban metropolises. Over years, the classic literature punctuated on the negative impact of terrorism in the tourist destination. Recently, some voices have questioned this assumption holding that under some conditions the tourist demands recover to the earlier levels before the crisis. This chapter discusses critically not only the differentiation between risks and threats but also the different faces of terrorism. We also propose a model based on three dimensions: terrorism as a risk, terrorism as a threat and terrorism as a worry. As a conceptual model, the resulted hypotheses and ideas should be empirically validated in next layouts.

Tourism does not flourish in areas subject to armed conflict and strong, violent sociopolitical instability. This axiom has obvious implications on the debate in tourism studies on the risks associated with armed conflicts. The question therefore remains as to how (and if) tourism can contribute to the reduction of global conflicts. This chapter reflects on how the men and women perceive tourism (from both supply and demand side) in this specific period of ‘End of History’ (Fukuyama, 1992). Does tourism reflect the Kantian idea of hospitality in the context of a Perpetual Peace – thus a force for good – or is it just another instrument at the service of neo-liberalism and unbridled economism? Finally, a possible alternative is proposed for the use of tourism in reducing structural and cultural violence.

This chapter is building conceptual background of psychological risk for international tourists. Drawing on Place Attachment Theory, Moral Disengagement Theory, Followership Theory, Job Demands-Resources, Acculturation Theory and Goal Progress Theory of Rumination, this chapter proposes a framework of psychological risks with six psychological risks that tourists could encounter in foreign destination: destination detachment risk, moral disengagement risk, risk of false risk assessment, burnout risk, risk of loneliness and risk of rumination. High destination detachment could lead tourists to behave less environmentally friendly, while high moral disengagement could lead tourists to behave less ethically friendly. Followership to the influencers in social media could lead tourists to engage in risk-taking behaviours and false risk assessment, leading to burnout risk, risk of loneliness and risk of rumination, where negative autobiographical memory is created and forming memory-related distress when they arrive homes. Place detachment and moral disengagement risk local environmental and social health, while burnout, loneliness and rumination pose risks for the tourists' psychological health. Several studies propose suggestions for the destination manager and tourists to manage the risk effectively and adequately, including place attachment and moral engagement campaign, careful travel planning and social support.

The concept of risk perception in tourism has long been studied and debated, being commonly approached as a multidimensional construct. Physical risk is one of the most common dimensions of perceived risk, covering numerous tourists' concerns. Given the extent of the items included in the physical risk dimension, the study aims to overview this topic, analysing different aggregated risks, presenting a schematic representation based on an extensive literature review that a posteriori was categorized into three groups: human-made, mixed and natural. The aim was to introduce a broader and more precise understanding of the physical risks in tourism.

Cultural differences are often important motivators for tourism, but they may also be associated with increased risk perceptions. Different cultures may also perceive risk differently. Despite the importance of this topic for tourism research, few studies have aimed to systematize literature on cultural differences, tourism and risk. Therefore, the main goal of the present chapter is to elaborate a bibliometric analysis of this literature, more specifically, to quantify its sources and clusters of co-citation and terms. To achieve this goal, the publications indexed in Web of Science with the terms cultural differences and tourism (242) are analysed using VOSviewer. A qualitative analysis of the studies which focus specifically on risk is also performed.

Tourism, as a system, develops strategies for risk prevention and mitigation. The shock generated by the COVID-19 pandemic is different when compared with previous events because it is more intense and prone to structural changes. Tourists' perceptions condition their behaviour and decisions, with adverse results on travel and tourism consumption; and hygiene and health risks generate a cause-effect relationship on destination specificities.

From globalisation to risk perception and crisis management, in a framework where technology, communication and digital content represent undeniable importance, we are facing circumstances especially conducive to the redesign of the collective future, where the sustainability of tourism is a collective goal, arising from the right balance between the competitiveness of destinations and climate action.

Given the prospects for the next decade, health and hygiene are structural factors to be considered in decision-making processes. Thus, so the proposed approach contributes to the awareness, by the various stakeholders, of its importance and the need to implement methods and processes compatible with more inclusive and responsible tourism.

Tourism and natural hazards share a long pathway, owing to the fragile existential status of certain tourist destinations and voluntary and involuntary intervention of mankind in the business of natural environment. Over a course of history, numberless natural hazards prevailed and left behind some of the colossal and collateral damage on the physicality and virtuality of destinations. Volume of studies contended this direct and inverse association. Resultantly, impact measurement, ongoing imagery issues and future forecasting have been made to ease out the tourist destination from the consequences of natural hazards. Moreover, considering the inner fabric of tourism system (demand and supply side), natural hazards have been foreseen as unwanted yet necessary event to be emphasized and taken care of. Predominantly, in the existing global milieu of maximum human intervention in the climatic cycle and its outcomes in the form of global warming, climate concerns, natural hazards have been considered as inevitable and destined. Hence, it needs a comprehensive literature-based study to assess the risk factor of natural hazards on the tourist destinations. This study, in acquiescence to address this grey section, intends to explore the existing studies (drafted on the risks impacts of natural hazards on demand, supply and ancillary segments of tourism) and structure the findings thematically and orchestrate these findings in the existing body of literature. Implications from the findings have been presented.

This research is about the evaluation of organizational risks in the hospitality sector, using the experience of a guest with visual impairments. The objectives of this research are to (1) identify if the previous expectations of a guest with visual impairments trip will be exceeded in the final; (2) classify organizational risks in the hotel sector; (3) verify if there are direct impacts on the travellers' future behaviour, such as destination recommendation and intention to return to the destination. Despite of the fact that organizational risks are composed by transport, hospitality and tourism attractions (tourism players can jeopardize the success of a travel experience), this research will only focus on the hospitality sector. To assure the achievement of the referred objectives, a case study will be used based on the analysis of the experience of a Portuguese guest with disabilities, who traveled alone, around Europe, with a guide dog. His expectations, constraints and risks will be analysed through a deep-depth interview, in which questions are organized from the literature review. Finally, it is expected that this exploratory research helps to find new avenues for the study of organizational risks, more precisely, hospitality risks for disabled people.

This chapter examines the pitfalls of overdependence on quantitative research in tourism and the depersonalization of those being researched in the post-COVID-19 world of tourism. Although not claiming that an overt dependence on numerical research can lead to fascism, this chapter demonstrates that fascist governments use numbers to reduce the human experience into a quantifiable commodity that is outside of the mainstream of liberal democratic ideals. The chapter connects the ideas of tourism research to the humanistic side of tourism and explores the historical roots of tourism research starting from Biblical narratives. Taking a theoretical approach, the chapter notes that in a world filled with science there also exists a parallel universe of mysticism and the reality that tourism research must find a way to reunite not only the quantitative with the qualitative but also the mystical side of reality with the scientific.