One of the big stories in Hong Kong in the last week or so has been about mainland tourists being ripped-off in Hong Kong. Well, what do they expect? It’s a well-established tradition to take tourists to "special shops" that are specifically designed to part them from their money in return for over-priced merchandise, and it doesn’t just happen in Hong Kong.
There have been reports of tourists being forced to go shopping in the approved shops or being abandoned by their tour guides if they fail to spend enough money, so it’s clear that the travel industry often relies on this arrangement to subsidise package tours, sometimes down to price levels that simply defy common sense.
There is a fine line between persuading customers to buy totally legitimate merchanise at inflated prices and deceiving people about what they are buying. It appears that a couple of shops have been caught out straying quite a long way over that line – in a report on CCTV last week they were accused of selling expensive fakes, and one of them was raided by Customs officers who seized 500 suspected counterfeit watches.
There has been much huffing and puffing about Hong Kong’s reputation – from another earlier report in The Standard:
The report has sparked concern that Hong Kong’s tourism image is being hurt by dishonest shop operators and traders.
Well, OK, but the key point (as Jake van der Kamp pointed out in the SCMP) is that a city like Hong Kong should not be worrying about tourism – or at least not the low-end type that we are talking about here. If the package tour industry rips off its customers that is their problem, and they will suffer.
Of course, if these companies have done something illegal then they should be prosecuted, but not just because they upset a few tourists.
Ordinary Gweilo 
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