'Understand the problem to design the policy'

INTERVIEW / Peter Tarlow

In his brief trip to Brazil, Peter Tarlow was hardly a tourist with a day trip mentality. This resourceful man and engaging speaker, ready to switch into Portuguese or Spanish to the convenience of his hosts, discussed the basic tenets of tourism security in a city that will host major international events every year starting in 2011, among them the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016.

“All tourism is local, part of a good security plan is figuring out what your local problem is to design your policy”, says Tarlow, adding that one needs to conjugate the issues of crime and issue of terrorism.

In an industry has experts guessing that it could be worth US$ 9 trillion a year globally, Tarlow cautions that tourism attracts terrorism. “Tourism security is a five part puzzle: you need to guarantee safety, security, economic development and the city’s reputation. Success means not limiting your focus to one of its parts.”

Peter Tarlow also works with the police in a field known as TOPS - Tourism Oriented Policy Skills. He has overseen the security of iconic monuments in the United Sates such as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building in New York.

In the interview that follows, given at Viva Rio’s headquarters in the historic Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Gloria, Tarlow pointed out how terrorism and crime have competing interests in major events, the need for sharp and sober media coverage, and the ever looming risk of economic insecurity.

His key message to Rio: information makes ripples, the farther you are from the source, the bigger the impact and the longer its effects last in time. Rio is physically distant from Europe and the US, and success will have lasting results for the city´s reputation.

Your work has been described as pioneering. When did it start?

Tourism security is a new field, it began in 1980s and most academic colleagues thought I was crazy, that I would not have any articles to publish, I have now published hundreds.

What is tourism security? Does it mean providing security for tourists?

It actually has six stages. You need to provide a safe and secure environment for visitors, for people coming from outside the community; the second stage is providing safety and security for people working in the tourist industry. For example, who do you think has a more dangerous job, someone working at a hotel or a police officer?

A Police officer…

You’d be wrong. Very few people plan on raping a police officer, but all sorts of crimes take place in hotels. In third place comes the protection of sites.

You worked protecting such sites, such as the Statue of Liberty…

Yes, and the fact is that you don’t need to attack a military target to seriously affect a government. Especially if it is an iconic area. I now work at Hoover Dam, an iconic area, which is one example, but you could imagine say if there were an attack on the statue of the Christ on Corcovado mountain, or someone blew up the Statue of Liberty, it would not be a military loss but the emotional impact would be so great that that politicians would be screaming and yelling, our government would fall over something like that. In the world of terrorism, you don’t need an act of terrorism; you only need to have people believe in the potential for an act of terrorism.

But getting back to the parts of the puzzle. You mentioned surety as more important than security, what does that mean?

In classical part of tourism security, we don’t use the word security we use surety, which includes safety, security, economic development and reputation. You can imagine all these elements converging at X, and the point where these come together is surety. The reason for that is you might be a safe community, but if you have a bad reputation, if someone attacks the economy, it could be a major problem. If its not safe, which could include a health issue - say a pandemic -, or if there are shoot-outs on the streets, it would be an issue. All four aspects need to come together to have our desired goal: surety.

What about economic development?

There are two more key points. One is economic security, which means you don’t lose your economy. If something just happened prior to the Olympics and no one showed up, Rio would have a huge negative cost, so it is important to make sure the economy remains stable prior, during and after the event.

And reputation?

Reputation has a very long afterlife. In 1992, five foreign tourists were murdered in Miami Florida, three were German and two were British tourists. Most Americans have long forgotten that. But when I go to Europe, to this day, people still ask me is Miami safe? The deaths were a cause celeb in the media; it meant Miami tourist police had to be retrained. It cost the state of Florida over a billion dollars.

And how this apply to the big events that will take place in Rio?

The further away you are from a spot, the most dangerous the event seems to be, and the longer it lasts in people’s minds. In Miami no one worries about what happened in 1992, but in Europe and in Asia people still ask me about it. In Rio, you are relatively isolated form the rest of the world. The image I like to suggest is: think of when you throw a stone into the water the waves get bigger as you go out.

The last issue is Ecology. It means protecting nature, but you also include culture under Ecology, why?

For example, if you go to Hawaii, you go not only for its nature, but for its culture. If it were to lose its unique culture, its lays, it would be a disaster. Mexico is another place that is losing its culture big time, the Mexican sombrero, you want to hear the mariachi dance, and they are cultural phenomena you don’t want to lose. Take the Galapagos Islands, how many tourists you can have before the Galapagos animals get used to people? You have to play the economics of the Galapagos versus the culture.

The dangers is exploitation, then?

If you ravage a place too much, you won’t have any tourism. But different places are vulnerable in different ways. I can have millions of people going to the British Museum without hurting London. The more, the merrier.

But you can’t do the same thing for the Galapagos Islands. Part of a good security plan is figuring out what your local problem is: all tourism is local. You can’t dump garbage on Ipanema Beach, and you have to have an environment that is safe for beach goers for example. The pretty girls on the post cards must be safe on the beach. Understand what your problem is to design your policy.

How do issues of crime and terrorism intersect?

You need to conjugate (like ar and er verbs) the issues of crime and issue of terrorism. Once in a while they cross paths but, most of the time, they don’t. I want to emphasize that I am speaking from the point of view of tourism, I am not making a political statement,

How do crime and terrorism affect the tourist industry?

A criminal tends to want the tourist industry to be successful. If I am a pickpocket and no one comes to the beach, it is a problem for me. Criminals need people to come. For example, I am sure there are people now thinking how they are going to make money off tourists during the Olympics and the World Cup.

On the other hand, terrorists want to destroy the tourism industry. It is not even an estimate, but a 'guestimate' that the tourism industry is responsible for US$ 9 trillion a year around the world. That is bigger than most countries. How do I arrive at that figure? Do I count airlines, road construction, a bridge to Itaparica as part of the tourism industry money or construction industry? I’ll let the locals decide how to count that.

In terms of Brazil, what are the priorities?

I am not terribly worried about a major terrorist threat right now in Brazil. More likely to worry about police clashes. From 2011 on, there will be major events every year. Terrorism loves publicity and you will have the eyes of the world on you. Tourism attracts terrorism, most terrorism that takes place in the world, (if we exclude military terrorism), most of the other attacks then to be against the tourism industry, hotels, airlines.

So most terrorist threats would come from outside the country?

It is impossible in today’s world to know what the word outsider is. If I looked at a place like Sweden or France 50 years ago, most people were either of one nationality or other. If you look at the world today, you have geographical borders but also cultural borders. Now you hear Arabic in Paris, things have become complicated.

Does this apply to Latin America?

Yes, there are huge issues in Paraguay, where there are four or five different cultural groups that have the potential. I am not saying they will blow up, but they could. We have to be careful in this world that cultural borders are not the same as geographical borders.

You say, however, that there is a role for the media in tourism security.

Professionalism in the world of journalism is very important. We see this with the coverage given to favelas in Rio. When a news article comes out, it is only an instant before it goes around the world through the Associated Press, or hits the big papers, such as The New York Times, and the smaller ones, such as my hometown paper. I hear comments, “oh you will be in Brazil next week, are you sure you want to go? Is it really safe?”.

That becomes a real issue, because while you necessarily need to report the news, it became an issue of using information responsibly. The job of the journalists is to tell the truth, without exaggerating, being accurate. A headline saying police arrest five people versus massive arrests at a location sometimes describes the same event but the first is more to the point.

In preparing locals for a big event, you’d need to train local journalists?

I would never ask an honest police officer not to do his job. If you need to give a traffic ticket, you do it. But you can do it two ways: by harassing the driver or being polite. So it’s not a question of what to do, but how you do it. All actions have consequences, intended and unintended consequences. If you have a series of news articles saying Rio the world´s most dangerous spot, you could be undercutting the economy of the community. What I tell journalists is: think through what you do.

How does one preserve the economy in face of risk?

The best way is to have prepared people in the industry who understand what they do, lots of good training and lots of forethought. And not looking at any part of the puzzle exclusively, but seeing as a whole. Don’t look at one section, but think how do all these people fit together, how do they cooperate.

There are many examples of Olympics that were economic fiascos. What is the biggest risk?

Montreal was an economic fiasco, Atlanta had problems - they may overspend -, and take Athens 2000, an economic fiasco. There was no overall city policy to work with prices. Hotels were charging up to US$ 1.000 a room in Athens. Potential tourists quickly realized it would not be worth the trip, they said: 'I will see it on TV.'

At that time the dollar was not weak as it is now. Restaurants made the same mistake. If you raise your prices the year of the Olympics above what people are able to accept, it is not worth it. Once the prices go up, it generates news articles about how expensive things were getting, and in turn create a lot of negative publicity.

In Athens though, other factors contributed towards the outcome…

In the end, with the games in Athens, people started cancelling their reservations. At the same time, and adding to that, it became known that Athens still lacked adequate security preparations. People were afraid. At one point they were putting the athletes in boats, and then someone raised a concern that the boats could be attacked, which led the police to ask Israel to send frogmen to protect the boats.

There had been riots not long before the Olympics. This precarious situation generated with overcharging had the additional stress of a heat wave of over 40 degrees, and on top of it a huge infrastructure (and unfortunately infrastructure always have over costs) you have a perfect storm!

That is a nightmare scenario…

Yes, but we people learn. We have learned what to do and not to do. I hope Rio is an economic, political and security success and will be used as a model for years to come.