The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The holiday rip-offs that even fooled our experts
Five professionals recount the scams and hustles which prove that even well-seasoned travellers sometimes get caught out on the road
You can plan a holiday to perfection, but you can never prepare for the rip-offs that you might face along the way. These come in many forms, from the sleight of hand of a taxi driver to daylight robbery from recognised hotel firms.
Our core destination experts and in-house editors have travelled to every corner of the planet, amassing many years of experience between them. So hopefully it is of some comfort, next time you find yourself in a sticky situation, that they too can get ripped off on the road.
Sleight of hand in Venice Nick Trend
When I was 19 and Interrailing around Europe on a £10-a-day budget, I was camping at Punta Sabbioni on the mainland next to Venice. At the end of a busy and impatient queue, I paid for my waterbus ticket to St Marks with a 50,000 lire note – which in those days was worth about £25. On the boat I realised that, instead of four 10,000 lire notes as the bulk of my change, the guy in the ticket office had given me just one – plus three 1,000 lire notes tucked cleverly behind it. I had been cynically shortchanged by 27,000 lire – more than £15 – a huge chunk of my budget.
An empty wallet in Iceland Mike MacEacheran
I may be a professional traveller (sort of), but I am not completely immune to holiday rip-offs – and in my book, Iceland is the king of the con: the big daddy of daylight robbery. Twenty-five quid for takeaway fish and chips from a street-food van? That one really hurts. Sixteen quid for a bagel with an almost invisible smear of cream cheese dampening the inside? That hurts even more.
And that is just the tip of the glacial iceberg. I recently visited the Snaefellsnes peninsula on an October trip full of seasonal chill, and was charged £300 for a humdrum box room, with no breakfast (though it did come with a free-of-charge wet dog smell). The further surprise was a fuss-free dinner-for-one that set me back a princely £67. The portion size left me hungry – or, as an Icelander would say, it was “ekki upp i nos a ketti”. Not enough to fill a cat’s nostril. Add the dosh I had parted with earlier for car rental and it all totted up to more than £500 for one day.
An inflated rickshaw fare Gemma Knight
There are those rare, magnificent moments when you see a con coming a mile off and, wits about you, manage to dodge it. I still feel a pang of smugness when I think of the Shanghai taxi driver who, not realising I lived there, had tried to take me miles in the wrong direction to push up the fare. The look on his face when I unleashed a tirade from the back seat in perfect Mandarin still brings me great joy.
I was not so lucky on a visit to Amritsar, India, when I asked a rickshaw driver to take me a couple of miles down the road. A typically lengthy negotiation followed; I talked him down to what I considered to be, if not quite cheap, then certainly fair, and off we went. When we arrived, I looked down to count my rupees, and when I looked up, the driver had been joined by 20 of his friends – all of them large and unsmiling. “The price has gone up by three times,” he told me. It was a sticky situation, and one which no amount of Mandarin would get me out of. In the interest of living to fight another day, I put my pride aside and paid up.
Daylight robbery at dawn Chris Moss
Posh hotels are snakes and scam artists: they hit clients for extortionate deposits; they fleece anyone who fancies a cheeky miniature; they charge ludicrous rack rates. But their biggest ripoff is room service – the insane mark-up for the delivery of an item to a room. I once checked into a five-star hotel after a miserable night flight, and said I would love some breakfast. The desk staff smiled obsequiously – there was no need to brave the dining hall: they would send something to my room.
Half an hour later, when I had almost given up, a tiny selection of items from the buffet arrived: a strawberry deconstructed into 10 slivers, a cooling cup of coffee, and some buns. I was later billed $30 for the privilege. I know, I fell for a ruse. I was made a mug of – or more accurately, I was just mugged.
An opportunistic salesman in Kerala Chris Leadbeater
On my first two mornings while staying at a no-frills hotel in Kerala, I noticed a man standing on the beach, holding items of clothing for purchase – hoping that a tourist would emerge from one of the rooms above. But it was a quiet time, the off-season for Kerala. So on my third morning, I decided I would do the deed.
The clothes were actually of fair quality. He had a selection of Nehru-collar shirts, in a variety of primary colours. He had bright scarves, and a range of well-made pashminas. So well-made, in fact, that I decided a whole host of upcoming birthday and Christmas presents could be acquired en masse. I picked nine or so and prepared to pay him.
I’m still not sure what made the conversation go the way it did. But when he suggested a number, I panicked, knocked a mere couple of hundred rupees off it, and waited. He blanched a little, agreed, shook my hand, and we completed the transaction. It was only once I had returned to my room and pulled up the latest exchange rate that I realised I had paid a European high-street price.
I did not see the salesman again. Delighted with his windfall, he had clearly taken the weekend off.
Tell us about a time you let down your guard and fell for a holiday rip-off at telegraph.co.uk/tt-ripoff