Tis' the Summer to Avoid Tourist Scams!

Tourist scams are nothing new. They come in all forms. In Thailand, there is the famous Tuk-tuk car scam where motorized rickshaws rip off tourists. In Europe, cunning street card tricks lure eager tourists to bet and lose.

Tourism has been a relatively new phenomenon to China over the last decade or so. But unfortunately, anywhere there are tourists, there are scams. Let's look at some common scams in China and see how people can protect themselves?

Andrea Hunt has more:

It's summer in Beijing and June ushers in the high tourist season. Unfortunately, tourist scams are still an issue. Sometimes it may be as simple as being grossly overcharged. If you don't speak Chinese, it's hard to argue. While maybe not all scams are dangerous, being ripped off can mess up anyone's vacation.

Zhang Jianzhong of China National Tourism Administration says without guidance in a new place, unfortunately, tourists can be easy targets.

"Unfortunately, some lawless people take advantage of tourists' unfamiliarity to local people, places, custom, culture as well as their curiosity. For example, they invite tourists to have some tea or do footbaths and and overcharge them. This phenomenon in Chinese is called "Zhai Ke", meaning swindle money out of customers. If tourists are organized by travel agency, this situation happens rarely according to my knowledge. However, if some individual travelers or tour group travelers go out at wills after dinner, they may encounter such problems."

The common theme seems to be, "things aren't always as they appear."

Sometimes certain tours have hidden agendas. Laurant Steegh from Holland studies in Guilin China and recalls a sneaky situation that happened to his Dutch friends who joined a tour in Beijing.

"They drove around and went to this very mediocre, even bad restaurant to have dinner. What happened was, the tour guide said, 'No, don't give the menu to them. Give me the menu.' Then she looked something up. She ordered something not that good and then told my friend and his parents to pay four hundred kuai for the food to her and that she would pay the restaurant.

But my friend said, 'This can never be that expensive.' So, he went to the manager himself to ask how much it was, and it was only like fifty kuai. So, that's a bad story about the tour guide who wanted to rip them off."

Among expats and tourists, two scams stand out as most common. The first involves students selling fake art. Another involves the innocent act of drinking tea.

Unfortunately, Christopher Irwin from Ireland was a target his first holiday in Beijing.

"I went to Forbidden City and as I was leaving, I was walking by myself. I encountered these two girls standing outside who looked like students; they were quite friendly. They asked me where I was from and I thought they just wanted to practice their English and they invited me to go for a cup of tea near Forbidden City. They said it's a very nice ceremony. I went there, and it was a very elaborate ceremony. And then I thought, it was a bit expensive. So, I called my brother, he was obviously living there and he said it's a very well known scam."

Sergio Zamudio from Mexico has worked in Ningbo, China the last eight years. When he arrived to Beijing airport the first time years ago, he was approached by a group of extremely helpful, yet deceptive young people.

"They were actually helping you, to see if you were overweight with your luggage. And actually, I was, so the girl took these papers from me and went somewhere and came back with a couple of invoices and said, 'Yeah, you're overweight, so you need to pay five hundred kuai.' I gave her the five hundred kuai. And then she asked me also for a service fee, 'You owe me a hundred kuai.' I said, 'I only have fifty.' She took the fifty and I turned around, went for my luggage, went to the counter and the girl disappeared. And I said to the girl at the airline, 'I already paid my overweight fee.' But she said, 'You don't have an overweight fee."

While frustrating and infuriating, China is by no means the only place for these types of scams.

In the UK, Irwin says he's heard stories of people being lured into bars, being overcharged then threatened with police if they don't pay the amount.

Steegh says that in Holland, taxis are notorious for taking the long way then threatening to drop people off along side the highway if they don't pay.

Here in China, new regulations have made it a bit safer and areas where scammers prey on tourists are more heavily patrolled. This May, Chinese authorities started getting ready by implementing additional regulations to help protect tourists. These include crackdowns on so-called, "free tours," a closer watch on travel companies with special attention to one day tours where tourists can easily fall into tourist traps.

Zhang Jianzhong from the China National Tourism Administration notes that tourists can avoid a lot of headaches by researching beforehand, booking through legitimate travel agencies, and reporting all irregularities.

Sometimes it's even more simple than that. As Laurant Steegh points out, as the old saying goes, "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is."

For CRI, I'm Andrea Hunt.