What’s that famous saying? Whatever you do, don’t get caught! Unfortunately in today’s world, where everyone is a walking video cameraman, it’s very easy to get caught.
As happened with the Hong Kong tour guide who got caught red-handed when she blew off steam at a group of mainland Chinese tourists for not spending enough and calling them “cheapskates”.
Her rant, captured in a video, has been making the rounds and the YouTube version has had over 96,000 views.
[Full English transcript of her rant]
It’s nothing new really – tour guides taking tourists for shopping and getting commissions. They’ve been doing it since, I am sure, the times of Marco Polo.
I remember my trip to Istanbul this March when I decided to do a day tour with a guide and, despite my insistence that I didn’t want the usual tourist trap experience, I was still taken to antique and carpet shops where he said “there were no obligations, just look”.
You could easily sense the pressure to buy.
I find such experiences distasteful for the customer – it puts me in an awkward situation and for someone who finds it hard to say no, it’s practically like being held hostage.
The tour guide, meanwhile, hangs around the shop and pretends he doesn’t care, but you know he’s watching your every move and hoping the next one will be for your wallet.
It was only after I requested that he changed his itinerary and that I really didn’t want to shop that he then proceeded to show me the non-tourist side of Istanbul.
The business of commissions though has been taken to a whole new level with mainland Chinese groups – perhaps it’s the sheer volume combined with the infancy of the market, and I am sure it happens with other markets as well.
The practice is called “zero-based” tourism – which is a euphemism for “you pay zero for everything but you pay back in some form or other”. Everybody knows it’s done, everyone “winks, winks, nods, nods” and everyone looks the other way.
Except this time it’s quite difficult for the Hong Kong travel industry officials to look the other way when something is as public as this. The guide has apologized and the Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong has berated her.
But will it mean the practice going away? No, sadly. And let’s face it, it happens not only in Hong Kong, but also Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.
Coincidentally, I was recently having a discussion with a tour operator in Taiwan on how the China market was going to impact the destination. With direct cross-Straits flights, China now accounts for a quarter of all arrivals to Taiwan and tour operators are scrambling for a slice of the market.
What he said were the most candid and realistic words I’ve ever heard uttered about the China market.
Calling it a “fatal attraction” for most foreigners, he recalled a joke somebody made about the difference between Japan and China. “In Japan we speak different languages but think similarly. In China, we speak same language but think differently.”
While he said that nobody could afford to neglect China, “everybody understands China just like the blind touches the single part of the elephant. It is not the full elephant”.
Guess the tour guide ended with the full elephant in her face.