Tourists’ Perceived Risks Toward Overt Safety Measures

Abstract

This study aims to assess tourists’ perceptions toward overt safety measures. The study segments tourists into four different groups depending on their perceptions toward overt safety measures, type of accommodation, and purpose of visit. A total of 476 respondents were segmented into special occasion tourists, leisure mid-priced tourists, frequent business travelers, and backpackers. A two-step cluster analysis and ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results show that, all clusters, except the backpacker segment, feel quite safe toward overt safety measures. Whereas the special occasion tourists at luxury hotels felt the safest toward overt safety measures, they concurrently were the most likely discouraged with too-stringent overt safety measures. Although most tourists feel safe about overt safety measures, a stringent increase in safety measures could frighten them because such measures could create a false perception that something untoward has previously happened at the destination. Hence, the old claim that stringent safety measures frighten tourists remains a classic rule of thumb. Therefore, hoteliers must find an appropriate balance in the extent of overt safety measures so as not to exceed the acceptable safety threshold of tourists.