Tourism & More

Working with your local police department.

March 2002

All too often tourism and travel professionals have tended to ignore issues of safety and security until faced with a crisis. This attitude of “benign neglect” often translates into a non-relationship between the police department and the travel and tourism industry until a crisis has already occurred and there is no time to build a cooperative relationship. Smart tourism professionals begin to build relationships with law enforcement and security professionals during the quiescent periods so that when these relationships are needed, they are already in place. To help you begin to develop these positive relationships (or to check on the quality of your present relationship) “Tourism Tidbits” suggests the following.

• Don’t assume that law enforcement will take the lead. Most agencies that deal with security are over worked and under paid. It is easy for them to overlook your needs. Take the lead by setting up appointments, calling on the local police departments, and making sure that they know that you want such a relationship.
• Invite law enforcement to participate on tourism and travel boards. Most security professionals have a very limited understanding of how the travel and tourism industry work. Offer them the opportunity of learning what your needs are and how you can work together to become allies.
• Scholarship law enforcement. Complaining when something goes wrong does very little good. Because budgets are often tight, few security professionals can afford to attend national conferences on tourism security such as the Las Vegas Tourism Security Conference. Offer local law enforcement agencies a scholarship so that these agencies can afford to send at least one security professional to conferences such as these. The money invested will produce not only a greater understanding of the travel and tourism security world’s needs, but help to build relationships between the security industry and the travel industry. This year’s national tourism conference is April 29-May 1, 2002 being held at the Las Vegas (Nevada) Monte Carlo Hotel. For further information or a brochure please, contact Don Ahl at <dahl@lvcva.com>.
• Offer to sponsor tourism security training to your local department. Most security professionals are required to have continual training. Bring in experts who can train law enforcement officers and make sure that the officers pass a test so that their department can be certified in TOPs (tourism oriented policing services). Good tourism security training consists of much subjects/topics about which most police offices have never considered. Tourism Oriented Police Officers know good basic police work, and have also been trained in being pro-active problem solvers, have a good understanding of the sociology and psychology of people in transit and have studied their role in the economics of tourism. Some of the subjects studied are CPTED (Crime prevention through environmental design), crimes of distraction, the principles of the Urban blasé, the differences between a person who is traveling in his/her own nation and one who is traveling abroad, communication skills and good customer service.
• Sit with your security chief and ask questions. Some of the questions that you should ask might be:
• How can we work together from an organizational perspective? What information do you, the members of the police department, need from us that we may not be giving you?
• How can we be supportive of your department throughout the year?
• Would you be willing to have a PD officer sit on our planning sessions?
• Are you familiar with TOPs training and would you like more information about it? Might we provide a scholarship to send one of your people to the national tourism safety conference in Las Vegas or would you be willing to have us bring in an expert to train the department in Tourism Oriented Policing?
• Also do not forget to ask questions such as: How can we join forces to achieve our common goal of a safe and prosperous community? What questions would you have liked me to have asked you? Do you wish to meet with our security people before the event? If so, when? What types of uniforms do you use? Can we use uniforms to create a positive image? When working our events/parades etc, how much lead-time do you need? How can we work on budgets together? Would you share some of the PD’s problems with us? How can we aid you? Can we develop a joint volunteer program?
• Take the time to listen. Many security professionals argue that they are often talked at rather than listened to. Make sure that you repeat what you have heard and that the head of your local police department and/or security agency knows that you sincerely desire to have a dialogue rather than a two-way monologue.