Abstract:
ABSTRACT
Tourist police service plays an imperative role in building tourist confidence in safety
aspect while they are on tourist destinations. Since less attention in tourism research
focuses on tourist police service and its importance, the current study is to fill the gap in
the literature by examining Tourist Police Intervention on Travellers’ Protection during
their Stay in Sri Lanka. Southern province being the research area to this qualitative
study, structured interviews were conducted using 4 tourist police officers in the police
stations in southern province and 6 tourism service providers at Mirissa, Hikkaduwa and
Galle area in order to collect the primary data to identify the tourist police officers
experience and perception about involving with the tourism industry and how it effect to
the country and their perception about the challenges, strength, weakness, strategies and
future plans that will implement for ensure the travellers protection. And industry service
provider’s perception towards the tourist police officers intervention and their
suggestions for making the safe environment for travellers. The collected data was
entered to Microsoft Excel 2012 and analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings of
this study gave that making the safe environment for travellers, Tourist Police officers
indirectly positively affect to the society and for the country economy, Tourist police
officers required special skills and knowledge such as foreign languages, communication
skills and special knowledge about the law enforcement related to the tourism and about
the import export procedures, existing custom procedures and immigration procedures.
According to the findings most of the issues reported from the southern province are
physical and sexual harassments, verbal abuses and fraudulent activities and in order to
prevent those issues Tourist Police officers already implemented the human and technical
measures such as in charging the community service providers such as communicators
and using modern technology for give a better and fast service. Tourist police officers are
planning to implement the mobile app that tourist can easily communicate with the
Tourist Police from anywhere any time in argent situations. When consider about the
community perception, that include the suggestions such as increasing the number of
police officers in the area, making more awareness programs and billboards that include
the details regarding the safety tips and the Tourist police contact numbers.
v
Keywords: Tourist police, Tourism industry, Travellers’ protection
