Demystifying visitor harassment

• Main Authors: Nicely, Annmarie, Mohd Ghazali, Raslinda
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2014
• Subjects: GV Recreation Leisure
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/27791/1/ATR%2048%202014%20266%20291.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/27791/; http://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2014.05.011

Visitor harassment is a decades old phenomenon negatively impacting tourism activities in developing countries across the globe (Kozak, 2007; McElroy, Tarlow, & Carlisle, 2007) and is one of the least researched areas in tourism. A factor that has contributed to the latter, and which some of the few scholars in the field have also noted, is a lack of a clear and agreed upon definition of the term (de Albuquerque & McElroy, 2001; McElroy et al., 2007). Visitor harassment has largely been defined as a negative behavior that annoys visitors (de Albuquerque & McElroy, 2001; Dunn & Dunn, 2002; Skipper, 2009). Hence, the goal of the study was to determine the visitors’ interpretation of the term ‘‘harassment’’ and to use this information to craft a more comprehensive definition of the phenomenon for further discourse amongst practitioners and researchers. This is important. A clear definition of visitor harassment would allow for more effective communication amongst researchers, traders, vendors and other industry partners. Incidentally, one island that has been battling with the problem of visitor harassment for decades is Jamaica. Exit surveys conducted by the Jamaica Tourist Board in 2006 and 2007 revealed that approximately 30% and 35% of visitors to the island, respectively,reported being harassed (Jamaica Tourist Board, 2006, 2007).