One of the reasons is there are more western travelers than ever before traveling for business and in this period of an expanded traveling industry. It's a confluence of trends. The one trend being so many more people traveling to sometimes unfamiliar locales and in combination with conditions in a lot of countries that are conducive to kidnapping. There are displaced soldiers and rebels in the post cold war era. You've got countries that because of modernization are in the midst of huge social and economic transitions and historically kidnapping has thrived in regions undergoing such change.
Kidnapping spreads like a virus in that gap.
Conditions foster kidnapping in combination with more available prey - then you've got a threat. It's something to be aware of. The first is curiosity. When I first learned that there were more kidnappings occurring than I knew about, then I was curious about why it was happening and what governments were doing about it and how families and companies were getting people out. The second reason was that through the human dramas I learned about, I realized that the ordinary citizen who is not wealthy or part of a corporation could have terrible problems if a loved one was kidnapped.