The Burrow
Oct 22, 2025
Whether you’re travelling across the globe to see incredible natural wonders, or putting your feet up in a local hotel after a hard week’s work, if you’ve ever visited a new country or destination, you’ve been a tourist.
A massive worldwide industry, tourism forms a core pillar in the economy of most countries, generating millions in revenue every year and giving people from all around the world the chance to visit far-off destinations and soak up the local culture.
However, as any experienced holiday goer knows, popular tourist destinations like these also have an unfortunate habit of attracting petty thieves and grifters, especially in open and crowded areas that are hard to police.
Simply put, these must-see sights make for the perfect scam and pickpocket hotspots. Focused on having a good time and taking in the iconic monuments around them, the last thing most tourists expect is to have their personal effects lifted from them.
Fortunately, more and more tourists are clocking on to the activities of these small-time criminals, alerting other would-be travellers online about the potential dangers of visiting certain famous attractions ahead of time, so future tourists know what to look out for.
With this in mind, the travel insurance team at Compare the Market wanted to use this data to work out which cities and landmarks around the world had the highest rates of scammers and pickpockets, while sharing their top tips for how to keep yourself and your belongings safe when travelling.
Find out what we uncovered below!
Beginning with the top cities for scams and pickpockets, we based our rankings on the number of pickpocket and scammer mentions per 1,000 visitor reviews for the most popular tourist spots in that city, as well as on the general concerns travellers had towards being mugged or robbed in that location, before scoring each city out of 100.
And as you’ll soon see, there are quite a few must-see cities that made our list!
Starting from the top, Bangkok holds the unenviable position of being the worst city on our list for tourism crimes. With five of its biggest attractions being noted as scam and pickpocket hotspots (the most of any city we examined), the Thai capital scored a total of 83.45 points, placing it well ahead of our second-place city and the rest of our top five.
Case in point, Bangkok was noted for pickpocketing incidents at a rate of 2.84 times per 1,000 visitor reviews (4th worst), and it actually tops the list for the number of scams mentioned per 1,000 reviews at 6.99, with total crimes mentioned reaching 9.82 per 1,000 reviews – again, the highest on our list.
However, perhaps most interestingly, visitor sentiment around being robbed in Bangkok remains low, sitting near the bottom of the table at 35.16 points; potentially hinting at a naivety amongst visiting tourists that local criminals are taking advantage of – though it could also be due to Bangkok having lower pickpocket rates overall compared to scams.
Next up, we have the French capital of Paris. Renowned as the City of Love, this iconic romantic getaway sadly also holds a much darker reputation for many tourists, which is backed up by its total score of 68.81 and combined scam and pickpocket mentions of 6.81 per 1,000 reviews (2nd highest).
Unlike Bangkok, criminals in Paris appear to favour pickpocketing over scams, with 4.54 pickpocketing incidents appearing in reviews (2nd highest) compared to only 2.27 mentions of scams (9th worst). Add to this robbery concern sentiment of 60.64 (6th worst), and it’s really no surprise that Paris ranked so highly.
Staying in Europe for our third-place country, Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, managed to bag itself a total score of 52.16 – thanks in no small part to its substantial pickpocketing rate and high combined crime mention total of 6.51 (3rd highest).
Topping the list for this factor at 6.01 mentions per 1,000 reviews, anyone visiting Prague’s biggest attractions might want to keep a hand on their pocket to avoid getting their phone snatched, though with only 0.50 scam notices and a robbery sentiment score of just 17.95, it seems most visitors to Prague are unfazed by such robbery risks.
Returning to Asia, the fourth-worst city for scam and pickpocket hotspots is the popular Chinese city of Shanghai. With a total score of 51.83 and a mixed scam and pickpocket mention rate of 6.28, visitors will definitely need to keep an eye on their belongings as they wander Shanghai’s iconic Nanjing Road and Yu Gardens.
More specifically, previous reviews for visiting Shanghai raised 2.19 incidents of pickpocketing (6th worst) and 6.28 incidents of scams (2nd worst). But much like Bangkok, those heading to Shanghai report a relatively low concern around being robbed at 22.39, again suggesting that scamming is a much bigger concern here than pocket theft.
Finally, for our fifth pickpocket and scam capital, we have the central Indian city of Agra. Home of the Taj Mahal, it’s no surprise that petty criminals would pick this world wonder to ply their trade at, and it likely helps to explain Agra’s total score of 47.48.
Thankfully for this city, however, and in contrast to the rest of our top five, visitors to Agra only reported a combined scam and pickpocket incident total of 4.77 (which still puts them 5th overall), with 1.85 pickpocket incidents (8th worst) and 2.92 scams (5th worst), alongside a mid-table ranking for robbery concerns (44.09).
All of which is to say that, while Agra has a lower petty crime rate than many of the other cities we’ve looked at, a healthy dose of caution won’t hurt if you plan on taking a trip out to its most iconic venue.
Having looked at the top cities for scams and pickpockets, which destinations in particular are guilty of seeing the highest number of tourism thefts on a regular basis?
Well, considering it placed first in our city ranking, you likely won’t be surprised to learn that Bangkok has the landmark attraction with the highest rates of tourism crime – specifically, The Grand Palace, which garnered a total scam and pickpocket mention rate of 26.16 per 1,000 reviews.
Then, and continuing along the same lines as our city trends, we have the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre in Paris (24.39 mentions), followed by the Nanjing Road in Shanghai (24.17), before breaking into new territory with Bui Vien Street in Ho Chi Minh City (20.60) and Pasar Chandni Chowk in New Delhi (17.18).
Even relatively quiet cities on our city ranking appeared in our top 50 attractions, such as the Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt, showing that petty thefts like these are common to all cities around the world – even ones where tourism is not necessarily the main focus.
In terms of which regions saw the highest rates of pickpocketing and scamming of tourists, Europe and Asia definitely stood out as hotspots for these activities. Out of all 65+ cities we looked at, 24 were located in the Asian continent and 27 in Europe – over half of our ranked cities and more than any other continent!
To put this into perspective, only 6 American cities made our final list, and the only cities that appeared from Australia were Sydney and Melbourne, with none of their attractions being noted as tourism crime hotspots.
As thrilling and exciting as any backpacking and travel experience can be, at the end of the day, it pays to be safe when you’re out and about – even if you’re in a country or city that’s considered relatively safe for visitors.
Naturally, you can’t account for everything, and things can and will go wrong on any holiday. But if you want to minimise the chances of a bad travel experience, and potentially getting your belongings snatched by an opportunistic thief, here are our top safe travel tips for when you’re abroad:
Of course, one thing we didn’t mention above is the importance of travel insurance. And for that, we turned to Adrian Taylor, our Executive General Manager, as to why finding the right cover is so important before you travel:
“An essential part of travelling, but one that many people neglect or forget, is having travel insurance in place before you set out is an absolute must. You cannot predict what will happen on holiday, and if something serious does happen, you’ll be glad you have that protection at your back.
“Travel insurance can cover a variety of events, including theft and lost luggage, documents and cash. Make sure to read the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD) to view details about insured events and coverage limits for a policy before you buy.”
This dataset ranks 75+ global cities on perceived pickpocket and theft risk based on 2 key factors. Each factor’s data was collected and normalised to a score between 0 and 1, and these scores were then combined to give each city a total score out of 100 – ranked from highest to lowest.
In addition to the global cities index, we have collected detailed keyword data (pickpocketing & theft term frequency) on top attractions globally, allowing for separate analysis and ranking of specific attractions and locations within cities.
The factors used were the following:
Factors were weighted as follows:
Factors were indexed as follows:
A higher score is worse and indicates a higher level of pickpocket and theft concern.
Attraction sampling used the TripAdvisor city “Things to do” list and included 10 attractions per city, based on page ordering. All data is accurate as of the time of collection. Rankings reflect these sources but may not capture every real-life detail.
A previous edition of this article is available here.