Chinese tourists ordered to shop – or else
Travellers have reported being berated, denied food, threatened with violence and warned that they would have no place to sleep unless they spent a certain amount at designated shops.
IT MAY sound like a spendthrift’s dream vacation: being forced to shop. But as tourism booms in China, many travellers on budget package trips are complaining that they’re being strong-armed by guides into purchasing jewellery, cosmetics, electronics and other goods – and now, the practice appears to be taking a deadly turn.
A 54-year-old construction contractor from northern China was fatally beaten this week in Hong Kong after he tried to stop a fight between a tour guide and a fellow traveller who did not want to buy anything in a jewellery shop.
The case has sparked outrage across the country, fuelling demands for more regulation while raising concerns about growing tensions between mainlanders and locals in Hong Kong.
And it has cast a light on group tours in which the phrase ‘‘shop till you drop’’ takes on a whole new meaning.
Officers who arrived at the shop in Hong Kong discovered the man, Miao Chunqi, unconscious. Witnesses told police he had been beaten by four men who fled. Miao was taken to a hospital and died the next day.
Authorities are investigating the case as manslaughter and have arrested two men, while two others remain at large.
Meanwhile, the two women who were arguing have also been arrested, on charges of fighting in a public place.
Joseph Tung, executive director of Hong Kong’s Travel Industry Council, which can sanction tour guides, agencies and shops for violating regulations, said it was the territory’s first case of a fatal attack on a mainland tourist – though in 2010, a 65-year-old mainland man died of a heart attack after arguing with a tour guide over being forced to purchase goods.
Tung told
the
South
China Morning Post that this week’s incident might deter other mainlanders from joining tour groups to Hong Kong.
More than 47 million mainland Chinese visited Hong Kong last year – making up 77 per cent of arrivals – but the numbers have been dropping amid growing disputes over etiquette issues such as urinating in public and political tensions after last year’s 10-weeklong ‘‘Umbrella Movement’’ prodemocracy demonstrations.
Rising disposable incomes have fuelled a domestic and international Chinese tourism boom in recent years, with retailers from Paris to New York to Beverly Hills adding Mandarin-speaking clerks to cater to Chinese travellers on spending sprees. China is the No 1 source of foreign tourists to Los Angeles, accounting for about 10 per cent of the 6.5 million overseas visitors last year.
After initially opting for group trips, many Chinese travellers are now venturing on self-guided vacations abroad. But millions of older or less well-to-do vacationers are still signing up for low-cost or ‘‘no cost’’ group trips closer to home – and then finding themselves literally held hostage during shopping excursions arranged by tour agencies which get a cut of the sales.
Travellers have reported being berated, denied food, threatened with violence and warned that they would have no place to sleep unless they spent a certain amount at designated shops.
In September, 43 mainland shoppers were reportedly locked in a jewellery store in Hong Kong for hours.
Guo Junping, a 55-year-old retiree from Henan province, is among those who learned the hard way that a ‘‘free’’ five-day trip to Hong Kong and Macao was anything but.
The vacation was promoted by an insurance agency in her home town, Luohe, and employees of the agency assured her that they had been on the trip and there was no catch. But as soon as she and two dozen others showed up for the bus to the airport, they were asked for about US$50.
Over the next four days, she said, her group was compelled to spend hours in a jewellery shop, an electronics dealer, a chocolatier and a cosmetics boutique. At the jewellery shop, she said, she was pressured to spend more than US$300 on a necklace charm.
‘‘After an hour, some people in the group wanted to leave, and then the door was shut and we weren’t allowed to go,’’ she recalled, adding that travellers were told they were not allowed to use their cellphones in the shop.
‘‘The tour guide announced that anyone who had bought things should come to her and register their purchases; those who didn’t buy things were pressured and scolded.’’
Guo said her initial purchase – a US$70 bracelet – was rejected by the guide as insufficient to meet her quota.
In Hong Kong, the only touristic site the group visited was the Ocean Park amusement park; other points of interest were only visible from the bus windows. Later, in Macao, Guo and the other retirees were forced to shell out US$64 for an exotic dance performance – and tip the performers.
When the tour finally reached the airport in Zhuhai for the flight home, she said, ‘‘we felt we were finally liberated. Until then, we felt like we were in prison. We had no personal freedom to do anything’’. Guo ended up spending more than US$800.
It’s not only retirees on a budget who are finding themselves at the mercy of predatory tour guides.
A 26-year-old woman who took an eight-day trip to Yunnan province with a friend earlier this month said she chose an expensive tour so as to avoid ‘‘forced shopping’’ but wound up being pressured to buy jewellery and silverware.
The tour guide carried a knife, she said, and after she called the tour agency to complain, the guide pressed her to withdraw her report.
‘‘He said if I didn’t withdraw my complaint within 10 minutes, he would ‘find someone to hang out with me’. I got too scared, and the agency and the guide knew all my info, and I feared for their revenge, so I didn’t do anything.’’
China’s National Tourism Administration this week blacklisted 10 travel agencies for ‘‘irregularities’’; five had their licences revoked and the other five were heavily fined, the state-run New China News Agency said. Seven other guides were punished.
Complaints over forced shopping were among the top issues travellers reported to the administration, the agency added.