Dr. Peter E. Tarlow is a world-renowned speaker and expert specializing in crime and terrorism on the tourism industry, event and tourism risk management, and tourism and economic development.  Since 1990, Tarlow has been aiding the tourism community with travel safety and security, economic development, creative marketing, and creative thought.

Tarlow has worked with numerous US government agencies, including the US Bureau of Reclamation, US Customs, the FBI, the US Park Service, the Department of Justice, the Speakers Bureau of the US Department of State, the Center for Disease, US Supreme Court police, and the US Department of Homeland Security.  He has worked with iconic US locations as the Statue of Liberty, Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and Liberty Bell, the Empire State Building, St. Louis’ arch, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Protection Services in Washington, DC.

Tarlow has been a keynote speaker for governors’ tourism conferences worldwide, including those for Illinois, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington State, and Wyoming.

He has addresses large scale US government meetings for such agencies as:

The Bureau of Reclamation
The US Center for Disease Control
The US Park Service,
The International Olympic Committee

On the international scene, he has addressed conferences such as:

The Organization of American States (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Panama City, Panama),
The Latin American Hotel Association (Quito Ecuador, San Salvador, El Salvador and Puebla, Mexico),
The Caribbean Chiefs of Police Association (Barbados),
The International Organization for Security and Intelligence – IOSI  ((Vancouver, Canada),
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Ottowa
The French Hotel Association CNI-SYNHORCAT (Paris)

Additionally, Tarlow is a featured speaker for numerous US embassies and foreign tourism ministries worldwide. For example, in his role as an expert in tourism security, he has worked with:

Vancouver’s Justice Institute  (2010 Olympic games)
The police departments of the state of Rio de Janeiro (2014 World Cup Games)
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
The United Nation’s WTO (World Tourism Organization),
The Panama Canal Authority,
Police forces in Aruba, Bolivia, Brazil, Curaçao, Colombia, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Serbia, and Trinidad & Tobago.

In 2013 the Chancellor of the Texas A&M system named him his Special Envoy.  In 2015 the Faculty of Medicine of Texas A&M University asked Tarlow to “translate” his tourism skills into new physicians’ practical courses.  As such, he teaches courses in customer service, creative thinking, and medical ethics at the Texas A&M medical school

In 2016 the international engineering firm Gannet-Fleming appointed Tarlow its Senior Security and Safety Specialist. Also, in 2016, Governor Gregg Abbot of Texas named Tarlow as the Chairman of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. He has wide experience in dealing with protest marches and other public events that touch upon that theme.

Tarlow organizes tourism security conferences worldwide, including the International Tourism Safety Conference in Las Vegas and conferences in St. Kitts, Charleston (South Carolina), Bogota, Colombia, Panama City, Croatia, and Curaçao.

Tarlow lectures and trains tourism professionals and security personnel in multiple languages on a wide range of current and future trends in the tourism industry, rural tourism economic development, the gaming industry, issues of crime and terrorism, and police departments’ role in urban economic development, and international trade.  Some of the other topics about which he speaks are the sociology of terrorism, its impact on tourism security and risk management, the US government’s role in post terrorism recovery, and how communities and businesses must face a major paradigm shift in they do business.

Tarlow publishes extensively in these areas and writes numerous professional reports for US governmental agencies and businesses worldwide.  He has been asked to be an expert witness in courts throughout the United States on matters concerning tourism security and safety and risk management issues.

As a well-known author in tourism security, Tarlow is a contributing author to multiple books on tourism security and publishes numerous academic and applied research articles regarding issues of security, including articles published in The Futurist, the Journal of Travel Research and Security Management.  Tarlow’s wide range of professional and scholarly articles includes articles on subjects such as: “dark tourism,” theories of terrorism, and economic development through tourism, religion and terrorism, and cruise tourism.  Tarlow also writes and publishes the popular on-line tourism newsletter Tourism Tidbits read by thousands of tourism and travel professionals worldwide in its English, Spanish, and Portuguese language editions.

Among the books that Tarlow has authored are:

Event Risk Management and Safety (2002).
Twenty Years of Tourism Tidbits: The Book (2011)
Abordagem Multdisciplinar dos Cruzeiros Turísticos (co-written 2014, in Portuguese)
Tourism Security: Strategies for Effective Managing Travel Risk and Safety (2014)
A Segurança: Um desafío para os setores de lazer, viagens e turismo, 2016 published (in Portuguese) and republished in English
Sports Travel Security  (2017)

At numerous universities worldwide, Tarlow lectures on security issues, life safety issues, and event risk management. These universities include institutions in the United States, Latin America, Europe, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East.  Tarlow earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Texas A&M University.  He also holds degrees in history, Spanish and Hebrew literature, and psychotherapy.

Tarlow has appeared on nationally televised programs such as Dateline: NBC and CNBC and is a regular guest on radio stations around the US.   He is the recipient of the International Chiefs of Police’s highest civilian honor in recognition of his tourism security work.

Tarlow is a founder and president of Tourism & More Inc. (T&M).  He is a past president of the Texas Chapter of the Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA).  Tarlow is a member of the International Editorial Boards around the world.
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