The Visitor Experience of Crime: The Case of Central Scotland

Abstract

Issues of crime in a destination area affect real and perceived visitor safety; away from rare but high profile incidents such as terrorist attacks, visitor security is more likely to be affected by a lesser criminal activity. This paper contributes to our existing understanding of how tourism can be affected by criminal activity by selecting a definable geographical area and investigating the dimensions, scale and nature of visitor-related crime and the perceptions, attitudes and behaviours of visitors in relation to safety issues. The results indicate that, although visitors believed the destination to be a safe one, the statistics indicated that they were more susceptible to crimes of dishonesty, in particular vehicle-related theft, and the times and places they were at risk evidenced different patterns to residents. With visitors accounting for less than 10% of the total population, these differences are not immediately apparent. Visitors are not homogenous and distinct groupings based on perceptions, attitudes and behaviours were found. TheREFore, there is a requirement to examine how crime is impacting on visitors by distinguishing them from the overall crime figures, but measures to protect visitors also have to be tailored to take cognisance of typologies of visitors.