The Burrow
Nov 8, 2024
Losing your money and belongings, especially your passport, on an international holiday is a traveller’s worst fear. It is easy to get lost in the excitement of visiting the next famous landmark, so much that we forget to keep our personal belongings secure.
In Australia, 405,400 people experienced non-break-in related theft (theft from a motor vehicle and other theft) between July 2022 and June 2023.1
As experts in helping Australians compare travel insurance, which can reimburse you for some stolen items while travelling (subject to limits and exclusions in your Product Disclosure Statement), we were interested to see which cities across the world are hotspots for pickpocketing and scams, and which are the safest for your belongings.
To do this, we looked at 29 of the most popular tourism destinations worldwide and studied pickpocket and scam related keyword mentions on tourism forums, as well as residential safety scores. These forum mentions were then placed against number of tourists in 2023 and indexed for a score between zero and 10, with 10 being the safest for your belongings.
Here’s what we found.
Paris comes in by far as the biggest hotspot in our index.
The iconic French capital topped the index for pickpocket and scam related keywords, with 25.00 keyword mentions per 1,000,000 international visitors. In particular, Paris tourists used the keywords ‘pickpocket’ (11.12 mentions per million), ‘stolen’ (4.18 mentions per million) and ‘scam’ (6.43 mentions per million) more than any other city on our list.
In addition, Paris landed as second highest on the index for mugging and robbery anxieties.
The Spanish city of Barcelona lands in second on our list.
The Mediterranean city placed as runner up to Paris in ‘pickpocket’ and ‘stolen’ mentions (7.64 and 3.82 mentions per million respectively), as well as leading the index in mentions of ‘theft’ (3.45 mentions per million). In comparison with the other cities in the index, the city received a low amount of ‘scam’ mentions. Overall, Barcelona received 17.82 negative keyword mentions per 1,000,000 international visitors.
Third on our list is the capital of the United Kingdom: London.
In comparison to Paris and Barcelona, London’s keyword mentions were quite a bit lower, at 8.90 keyword mentions per 1,000,000 tourists. Conversely, London’s mugging and robbery anxieties were much closer to our first and second ranked cities, at a rating of 58.19.
Placing fourth on our list is the Italian capital: Rome.
Rome was right up there alongside Paris and Barcelona for receiving far more mentions than other cities in the keyword analysis, specifically having 17.36 mentions per million, compared to Paris’ 25 and Barcelona’s 17.82.
Rome placed third in three of the four keyword mentions categories, with 7.01 ‘pickpocket’ mentions per million, 3.22 for ‘stolen’ and 2.87 for ‘theft’.
Of the top five cities in our index, Rome placed the lowest for mugging or robbery anxieties with a score of 45.46 out of a possible 100.
Rounding out the top five on our list is Las Vegas.
The unofficial gambling capital of the world, it might come as no surprise that the keyword that showed up most often for Las Vegas were ‘scam’ mentions, at 5.40 mentions per million international visitors. ‘Stolen’ and ‘theft’ keyword mentions turned up at a rate of just over one per million (1.43 and 1.59 respectively).
| Keyword Mentions / 1,000,000 International Visitors | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | Worries being mugged or robbed | Pickpocket | Stolen | Theft | Scam | Keyword Total | Index Total |
| Paris, France | 60.74 | 11.12 | 4.18 | 3.27 | 6.43 | 25.00 | 0.09 |
| Barcelona, Spain | 59.17 | 7.64 | 3.82 | 3.45 | 2.91 | 17.82 | 0.45 |
| London, United Kingdom | 58.19 | 1.68 | 1.94 | 2.06 | 3.23 | 8.90 | 1.08 |
| Rome, Italy | 45.46 | 7.01 | 3.22 | 2.87 | 4.25 | 17.36 | 1.44 |
| Las Vegas, United States | 49.95 | 0.16 | 1.43 | 1.59 | 5.40 | 8.57 | 1.70 |
| Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | 57.91 | 1.03 | 1.28 | 0.51 | 5.38 | 8.21 | 1.97 |
| Orlando, United States | 43.48 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 2.44 | 5.85 | 8.29 | 2.42 |
| New York City, United States | 50.25 | 0.78 | 1.72 | 1.12 | 3.36 | 6.98 | 2.95 |
| Istanbul, Türkiye | 44.92 | 0.11 | 0.11 | 1.36 | 5.57 | 7.16 | 3.13 |
| Madrid, Spain | 26.71 | 4.15 | 1.22 | 2.20 | 0.49 | 8.05 | 3.40 |
To view the full dataset, click here.
Compare the Market’s Executive General Manager of General Insurance, Adrian Taylor, notes the importance of ensuring your travel insurance covers your passport and valuables when you’re on holiday.
“From pickpockets to just pure forgetfulness, you can never be too careful with your valuables, especially your passport and other important documents, when you travel overseas,” Mr Taylor said.
“If your items are lost due to theft, your documents may be replaced, or you could be reimbursed for the cost of replacements up to the policy limit.
“However, losing your items due to negligence will likely lead to a rejected claim, so it’s important to ensure that you keep your items safe with you at all times.
“Keeping your items in secure bags on your person rather than in your pockets is a great way to further decrease the likelihood of your items being stolen.”
Always read the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD) to check for the inclusions, limits and restrictions before purchasing.
Across our study of 39 cities, data was collected across five categories, and each was indexed with a score between 0 to 10, with the latter representing a ‘safer’ score. These were then averaged, with different weights across categories (25% weight toward ‘Worries being mugged or robbed’ and 75% weight toward total keyword mentions on travel forums) to create an overall index score out of 10.
City range and number of tourists in 2023 was found here.
Numbeo’s user-reported ‘worries being mugged or robbed’ metric was recorded for each city.
TripAdvisor city forums were accessed on 25/09/24, with keywords being input into each individual city forum and every comment posted during 2024 with the keyword mentioned was counted. The keywords for each city forums were:
The keyword mentions were then placed against the cities’ number of tourists in 2023 and a number of keyword mentions per 1,000,000 tourists was calculated.