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Dodgy tour guides haunt Hong Kong
Unscrupulous tour guides are back in the news, this time in Hong Kong where a video surfaced of a guide screaming at a group of Chinese tourists and demanding that they spend more money.
AFP/Relax News reported that mainland China’s official tourism body, in response recent incidents, this week issued a warning to travellers planning a trip to Hong Kong
At one stage in the video the tour guide, Ah Zhen, reminds the tourists that she has arranged everything for the trip and "If you don’t pay me back in this life, you’ll still have to pay me back in your next life”.
She also says, "Spend more, you’ll be happier… don’t tell me you don’t need [to buy more], next you’ll be telling me you don’t need to eat at meal time. I will lock you out of your hotel rooms because you don’t need them [either]."
These cheapie tours are not confined to Hong Kong. Australia has grappled with the problem of tours in which Chinese pay very little for their holiday while the tour guide makes his or her cut from commissions obtained from certain shops.
The size of these commissions is related to the amount of money the Chinese tourists spend on souvenirs and other personal items.
In one case, a tour guide tried to charge a group of Chinese tourists to walk on Sydney’s Bondi beach.
Tour operators in Shanghai have apparently claimed tours to Hong Kong are down 30 percent this year due to a spate of similar controversies.
The Hong Kong government is looking into taking control of the licensing system for tour guides and cracking down on "zero-charge" packages in the wake of recent scandals
Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Rita Lau Ng, said free tours and lax regulations for tour guides are at the root of the problems besetting the industry.
Meanwhile, tour guide Ah Zhen said she has suffered emotionally since the release of the video that shows her shouting at the mainland tour group.
"My feelings have been very unstable," she told a local newspaper. "It may have just been a little incident but it has been blown up into a big controversy.”
By Ian Jarrett
Ian Jarrett
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