To avoid damage to fragile environments, ancient heritage sites, traditional customs and secluded local communities from tourist hordes, sustainable tourism policies and practices are being emphasized. While this is certainly correct, it must be understood that the foundation of sustainable tourism is tourist safety.

While this might seem self-evident, this is often not the case in practice. Despite a return to high earnings from tourism, governments across the world, including in Indonesia, are seen to be slack when it comes to tourist safety. While safety is high and visible at airports, train stations, museums and high-end hotels, it is rare to find adequate tourist police at destinations.

In fact, it is surprising that most countries have not invested in creating a professional cadre of tourist police whose primary responsibility is to protect tourists and safeguard destinations. It is often seen that the more remote a world heritage site, the less presence of tourist police to control and coordinate visitors.

Governments have taken the easy way out by delegating this responsibility to regular police. This is irresponsible, because these brave forces become overstretched with an addition to their normal duties, which include preventing and tackling crime, preserving civic harmony, handling demonstrations and providing security for leaders, ministers, officials and other VIPs. Their roles have become even more demanding as societies grow more polarized with recurring instances of terrorism, anarchy, violence, gang wars, sophisticated thefts, drug dealing and cyberattacks.

While providers of professional security services have stepped up, at best, they can only partially fill the vacuum. While security guards are adept at safeguarding malls, concerts, conferences, sports tournaments and condominiums, they lack the training, weapons, authority to detain and arrest, counterterrorism capabilities and access to the wider intelligence and defense ecosystem to provide the level of security that tourists, site operators and residents deserve. At best, third-party security agencies are a useful, additional ring.

Failure to create robust a tourist protection force at a requisite level has left a deadly trail in the first quarter of the 21st century: Attacks on tourists occurred in Bali in 2002, Madrid in 2004, Marrakech in Morocco in 2011, Boston in the United States in 2013, Sousse in Tunisia in 2016, Giza in Egypt in 2018, Negombo in Sri Lanka in 2019, Re’im Eshkol in Israel in 2023, Magdeburg in Germany in 2024 and the latest horrific massacre of innocent tourists in India-administered Kashmir in April this year.