Combating Tourism-related Corruption: Effective Countermeasures Derived from Analysing Tourists’ Perceptions and Experiences

Abstract

Corruption in the context of tourism adheres to the mainstream tradition of (anti-)corruptionrelatedresearch; mainly focusing to the macro-level impact of corruption in economicdevelopment. A number of studies utilize secondary data and / or indices to explore causality /correlation with an array of tourism performance indicators. This paper aims at complementingthe existing research by exploring the corruption phenomenon from the perspective of theindividual tourist (micro-level). Content (qualitative) analysis of 204 holiday reviews posted ontripadvisor.com were selected and coded. The meta-data analysis of the reviews and thepreliminary thematic analysis suggest that tourism-related corruption can be effectively andpragmatically combated with targeted, pragmatic measures at a local-level, without significantdependence on overreaching legislative, structural (and even cultural) changes. This worksupports the notion that relatively small and short-term organizational changes at a local level canenable larger-term, significant positive anti-corruption effects at the macro-level.

Keywords

• tourism
• corruption
• reviews
• perceptions
• content analysis