Riot police in standoff with angry Macau visitors
MACAU – Riot police in China’s enclave of Macau have been called in to calm mainland tourists angry they were being shown too many shops and not enough sites.
BBC Online reported that more than 20 police armed with riot shields and batons were involved in a five-hour standoff with 100 tourists from Hubei province.
The last straw came at a windy beach where the tourists were not allowed to retrieve warm clothing from coaches.
From Asia to Australia, conflict between unscrupulous tour operators, tour guides and their guests has at its heart the proliferation of “zero commission” tours in which an inbound tour operator makes his or her money by preying on unwary tourists – often Chinese on a first overseas trip.
The operator, in the absence of commission, makes a living from kickbacks from duty free shops, or by enticing tourists to pay for free events and by boarding them in sub-standard accommodation.
In one recent instance, a tour guide at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport was caught in the act of cheating his Chinese customers by using fraudulent Tourism Authority of Thailand documents listing obscene girlie shows as non-optional tours.
Other extreme examples have included tour operators in Australia asking Asian tourists to pay to walk on Sydney’s Bondi beach
The gambling hotspot of Macau has become a key destination for mainland tourists.
The Chinese mainland tourists had complained to their guides that they wanted to see more of the former Portuguese colony’s historic sites.
They said they were being pressured into buying goods.
A scuffle broke out at the beach when the tourists were not allowed to re-board their four locked coaches to get some warmer clothing.
Police tried to push back the angry tourists with batons and detained at least four.
“Some tourists refused to let some of our colleagues go and attempted to use violence,” one police officer told the South China Morning Post.
Macau tourism officials said the incident was a “one-off situation”.
Tourist figures show that some 22 million people visited Macau last year, most from the mainland.
-by Ian Jarrett
Ian Jarrett
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