High gas prices, world economy in a mess, war, terrorism and much more are affecting travel this summer. It will be a tough couple of months for any Americans who plan to take the family on the usual auto trips to the shore or mountain, visit historic sites in Europe and Asia and try to find some normalcy in an atmosphere of financial panic.

Americans face cancelled and delayed flights, sky-high hotel and restaurant prices, and angry faces of people whose resentment for the U.S. gets deeper as their own countrys' economy tank. Because of the steep drop in tourist business, many workers are being laid off. As jobs in the tourist industry get scarcer, there's a comparable rise in street crime, much of it aimed at tourists.

For instance, in one Paris upscale hotel, nearly 30 percent of the staff has been downsized. Many are recent immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and they were making decent combined family incomes, because all the adults had service jobs in resorts, hotels and restaurants. Now, with the layoffs, half of the money has suddenly been taken away. The teens and young adults now roam the streets, jobless and angry. Sooner or later, their desperation will lead to street crime against the most visible target: tourists.

In Las Vegas, there is a similar situation that seems to grow worse by the day. More than half of the 200,000 service workers are Mexican immigrants, legal and otherwise. When they got construction, casino, hotel and restaurant jobs during the booming 90s in Sin City, a typical family of two adults and three teens could bring home $80,000 or more a year.

They bought $300,000 homes, believing they had actually achieved the American dream. Then, when the 2008 Las Vegas tourist industry suffered a 10 percent drop from 2007, and the layoffs started, the dream began to fall apart. By mid-summer 2008, the city has become the home foreclosure capital of the U.S., with percentages in some neighborhoods at 50 percent. Empty houses have become regular targets for vandalism and are being stripped of building materials by thieves. It is no coincidence that teenage street crime, including attacks on tourists, in Las Vegas is up more than 200 percent so far this year.

All that said, and with the understanding that desperate people will commit desperate acts to survive in a failing economy, it is more important than ever that travelers do everything possible to protect themselves, their families and their belongings.

Since

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