A Preliminary Investigation into Tourism-oriented Crimes in Ghana

Tourism has, over the past two decades, become a major economic activity in many developing countries. It is however, extremely sensitive to insecurity and destinations which are perceived to be unsafe quickly become unattractive and unpopular, and ultimately find themselves losing out on the stiff competition for the tourist dollar. With the growing number of tourists therefore comes an urgent imperative to secure the trade. The first step in such an endeavour would be to understand the dynamics of the phenomenon. Using data collected from three key tourist towns in Ghana, a growing tourist destination, this book presents preliminary information about the incidence, nature and patterns of tourist victimization. The analysis provides insightful basic information on various facets of tourist victimization which will be useful to a broad range of users including the security services, international development agencies who seek to use tourism as a tool, destination managers, tourism services providers and fellow academics who specialize in tourism security.