Tourism and Crime in America: A Preliminary Assessment of the Relationship between the Number of Tourists and Crime in two Major American Tourist Cities

Tourists planning to visit the United States have many exciting destinations to choose from. The number of people visiting the USA is on the rise, and their spending is growing even faster thus increasing the value of tourism to the economy. International arrivals and domestic travelers have increased over the last decade. However, for as many historical landmarks, amazing nightlife scenes, and striking landscapes there are to take in, oftentimes that also means major urban centers can have their share of crime, which can result in tourists becoming victims of crime. These paper objectives are to assess the effects of crime on health and the relationship between the number of visitors and the types and patterns of crimes, over time, in two cities engaged in mass tourism. A quantitative methodology was utilized to analyze thirteen years of crime data from the US Federal Bureau of Investigations. Based on the data, this research by itself, cannot adequately explain the variations in violent crime rates of either of the two cities. The results of the Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient showed the tourist city of Honolulu with an inverse relationship between the number of visitors and violent crimes while Las Vegas results showed significant correlation between the number of visitors and crime. The results also showed relationships between increasing law enforcement employees and crime reduction. These results could assist these and other cities in studying more distinctively the relationship between crime and tourism as well as the localization of crimes on visitors in order to engage in measurement and prevention efforts which would serve visitors as well as residents.