Pacific study calls for policies to deal with ‘sex pest’ tourists

Sexual harassment has become a major problem for Pacific Islands tourism, with “sexualised” marketing campaigns encouraging bad behaviour, according to Auckland University of Technology research.

Lisa Sadaraka, a tourism lecturer at the university, looked at the frequency and impact of sexual harassment by tourists visiting the Cook Islands, north-east of New Zealand.

Her research is one of the first detailed studies of workplace harassment in the Pacific region and highlights the need to deal with culturally insensitive tourism advertisements based on sexual innuendo.