According to the WTO (WTO, 1997; Wilks, 2002), risks to the safety and security of tourists, host communities and tourism employees originate from the following four sources:
● The human and institutional environment outside the tourism sector
● The tourism sector and related commercial sectors
● Individual travellers (personal risks)
● Physical or environmental risks (natural, climatic and epidemic).
While the focus of this book is on visitor safety — which includes protection of life, health, and the physical, psychological and economic integrity of travellers — the WTO framework for sources of risk is very valuable for making sense of the many current issues canvassed above. Indeed, the framework has been used successfully in several interna- tional projects (for example, Wilks & Moore, 2004), so it is presented here again in detail.
Adoption of a robust framework is also a step towards addressing one of the continuing concerns in this area — that there are few mechanisms in place to gather and disseminate timely information to protect tourism interests (IH&RA, 1998; Wilks & Moore, 2004).
The Human and Institutional Environment
The risks from the human and institutional environment exist when visitors fall victim to:
● common delinquency (e.g. theft, pick-pocketing, assault, burglary, fraud, deception);
● indiscriminate and targeted violence (e.g. rape) and harassment;
● organized crime (e.g. extortion, slave trade, coercion);
● terrorism and unlawful interference (e.g. attacks against state institutions and the vital interests of the state), hijacking and hostage taking;
● wars, social conflicts and political and religious unrest; and
● a lack of public and institutional protection services.
Risks that occur in the broader community impact similarly on tourists and residents.
Tourists are not always targeted, but they are often caught up in events by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (see Chapter 7). Protection of tourists at this level is the responsibility of national governments and contributes to whether a destination is per- ceived to be safe. As demonstrated with travel advisories, this is an area where national governments are very active in trying to assist their travelling citizens, while at the same time, visitors are particularly reliant on the security services of the host nation.
Tourism and Related Sectors
Through defective operation, tourism and sectors related to tourism such as transport, sports and retail trade can endanger visitors’ personal security, physical integrity and eco- nomic interests through:
● poor safety standards in tourism establishments (e.g. fire, construction errors, lack of anti-seismic protection);
● poor sanitation and disrespect for the environment’s sustainability;
● the absence of protection against unlawful interference, crime and delinquency at tourism facilities;
● fraud in commercial transactions;
● non-compliance with contracts; and
● strikes by staff.
The protection of tourists from problems occurring in areas directly related to tourism is a joint responsibility of individual operators, tourism authorities at each destination, tourism industry associations and relevant sectors of local government. Problems in this area are not necessarily the ‘fault’ of the tourism industry, but can have a dramatic and neg- ative effect on a destination’s image. As emphasized by FTO (1999, 2003), with appropri- ate standards in place, tourism can take ownership and responsibility for health, safety and security in relation to its operations. Again, reviews show that the same core issues con- tinue to present challenges for key industry sectors like hotels (Surawski & Wilks, 2002).
Legal obligations, especially ‘duty of care’ responsibilities, are now clearly articulated for many areas of travel and tourism (Atherton & Atherton, 2003); further reinforcing the need to provide safe experiences for visitors in areas that are directly related to tourism.
Individual Travellers
Travellers or visitors can endanger their own safety and security, and those of their hosts by:
● practicing dangerous sports and leisure activities, dangerous driving and consuming unsafe food and drink;
● travelling when in poor health, which may deteriorate during the trip;
● causing conflict and friction with local residents, through inappropriate behaviour towards local communities or by breaking local laws;
● carrying out illicit or criminal activities (e.g. trafficking in illicit drugs);
● visiting dangerous areas; and
● losing personal effects, documents and money through carelessness.
Most travel health and safety incidents occur at the level of individual travellers. Many problems are the result of visitors being in an unfamiliar environment and/or participating in unfamiliar activities. For example, motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of injury-related death for tourists worldwide (Wilks, 1999; Page, Bentley, Meyer, & Chalmer, 2001), followed by drowning (Wilks, 2002). In support of the unfamiliar environment the- sis, detailed analyses of motor vehicle crashes involving tourists in Australia show that:
● international visitor crashes were less likely to involve high-risk driving behaviours such as alcohol use or speeding; and
● international visitor crashes were more likely to involve disorientation, particularly driver fatigue, failure to keep to the left (correct) side of the road, head-on crashes and overturning their vehicle (Wilks, 2004b).
Unfamiliar adventure activities, such as scuba diving, also account for a significant num- ber of tourist hospital admissions each year (Wilks & Coory, 2000, 2002), while travelling with pre-existing illness continues to be the main cause of overseas visitor fatalities (Wilks, Pendergast, & Wood, 2002). Some very innovative and useful visitor safety programmes are discussed in the Adventure section of this book; however, as Tarlow points out in Chapter 7, tourists behave differently when away from home, often doing things in a state of disorien- tation or ‘anomie’. So the tourism response must go beyond the minimum duty of care responsibilities in many cases, to understand and prevent reasonably foreseeable incidents from occurring in the first place. This is not to suggest that tourists do not have to take
personal responsibility for their actions, but rather that the relevant authorities need to assist them in making informed choices. For example, some countries have severe penalties for drug trafficking. This should be drawn to the attention of visitors so that there can be no mis- understanding of the consequences if local laws are disregarded. Many tourists are unaware that the drug laws of the host country are applicable, not those of the tourist’s citizenship.
Malaysia, for example, strictly enforces its drug laws. Malaysian legislation provides for a mandatory death penalty for convicted drug traffickers. Individuals arrested in pos- session of 15 g (1/2 ounce) of heroin or 200 g (7 ounces) of marijuana are presumed by law to be trafficking in drugs (http://travel.state.gov/malaysia.html).
Physical and Environmental Risks
Finally, physical and environmental damage can occur if travellers:
● are unaware of the natural characteristics of the destination, in particular its flora and fauna;
● are not medically prepared for the trip (vaccinations, prophylaxis);
● do not take the necessary precautions when consuming food or drink or for their hygiene; and
● are exposed to dangerous situations arising from the physical environment (e.g. natural disasters and epidemics).
Physical and environmental risks are also largely personal risks, but are not caused deliberately. Rather, these result from the traveller’s ignorance or their disregard for poten- tial risks. In our earlier book on tourist health and safety (Wilks & Page, 2003), we men- tioned that physical and environmental risks do not feature prominently in the tourist health and safety literature, but that a single environmental disaster has the potential to claim a large number of lives. As at 22 January 2005, the confirmed death toll around Asia from the tsunami stood at more than 219,000 and was still expected to rise (Anonymous, 2005). Nationals from more than 50 countries were killed.
In Chapter 9, Alison Specht provides coverage of natural disaster management in rela- tion to tourism, which draws on both tourism and mainstream emergency and disaster management literature. As a current issue for tourism it is worth distinguishing between a risk, a crisis and a disaster (Wilks & Moore, 2004). To some extent the relationship between the three is one of escalation (Figure 1.1), but there are also basic differences in the literatures for each, and the people who specialize in the associated fields.
According to the Australian and New Zealand Standard (Standards Australia and Standards New Zealand, 1999, p. 3), a Risk is:
The chance of something happening that will have an impact upon objec- tives. It is measured in terms of consequences and likelihood.
Risk ---䊳---Crisis---䊳---Disaster
Figure 1.1: An escalation of events.
Risk Management is defined as:
An iterative process consisting of well-defined steps which, taken in sequence, support better decision-making by contributing a greater insight into risks and their impacts. The risk management process can be applied to any situation where an undesired or unexpected outcome could be sig- nificant or where opportunities are identified (p. iii).
These terms are important because they draw our attention to proactive opportunities to take control of a situation through early identification and prevention of risk, as well as strategies to manage risks that emerge from time to time. There is always a chance of some undesirable event occurring, so effective risk management aims to prevent an event esca- lating ‘out of control’ and becoming a crisis. According to the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA, 2003, p. 2), a Crisis can be defined as:
Any situation that has the potential to affect long-term confidence in an organization or a product, or which may interfere with its ability to continue operating normally.
When a Crisis, in turn, escalates we then have a Disaster, defined by Zamecka and Buchanan (2000, p. 8) as:
A catastrophic event that severely disrupts the fabric of a community and requires the intervention of the various levels of government to return the community to normality.
The view presented in the APEC report was that a systematic approach to risk man- agement by both the tourism industry and governments will in many cases prevent a crisis or disaster from occurring (Wilks & Moore, 2004). However, not all adverse events can be avoided, so risk management must be used to respond quickly and effectively to negative situations. Government leadership is critical for the success of this process, since in the final analysis it is the government at each tourist destination that has the resources and the responsibility to provide a safe experience for visitors.
The benefit of the WTO framework for identifying sources of risk is that it shows where tourism is exposed to threats. For the tourism-related areas and with individual travellers the industry can take an active and leading role in risk management. Where events exter- nal to tourism are the source of threats the industry must establish partnerships with other specialist agencies.