Sanya cracks down on scamming in bid to save face

(Ecns.cn)--In an effort to calm public outrage following a series of scandals, China's tropical resort city of Sanya, located in the southernmost island province of Hainan, has begun cracking down on price gouging by revoking licenses and levying heavy fines on businesses that have been caught cheating customers, the China Daily reported on Thursday, citing local officials.

The officials, who are from the city's Industry and Commerce Bureau, revealed that a seafood restaurant had been fined 500,000 yuan (US$79,445) for charging customers 9,746 yuan (US$1,549) for a seven-course meal during the Chinese New Year holiday in late January.

The move came in response to allegations made by a man on his microblog that he had been charged 3,600 yuan (US$572) for a simple three-dish meal at a seafood stall, which soon sparked a wave of indignation from tens of thousands of web users.

Authorities have also revoked the licenses of another seafood restaurant which was found to have deceived customers by exaggerating the names of ordinary seafood items on its menu in order to raise prices, according to the China Daily.

On February 2, Sanya CPC Party Secretary Jiang Sixian made an apology for the defrauding of tourists by seafood restaurants, hotels and taxi drivers.

The government will adopt a zero tolerance policy toward the black sheep that harm Sanya's reputation as an international tourism spot, Jiang said.

The scandals exposed online are just the tip of the iceberg, however; there are many tales of tourists in Hainan being cheated, especially in winter, when the sunshine attracts people from colder parts of China, noted the China Daily.

Wang Youdu, who worked in Hainan for three years, told the newspaper that non-locals always had to pay higher prices. "The owner always did tricks with the scales. Once at a street stall in Sanya, I found that my cell phone weighed two kilos!"

A survey conducted by the China Youth Daily (CYU) on Minyi.net.cn and Sina.com last week revealed that 89.9 percent of 1,005 respondents online had been defrauded on trips, and that they had often been overcharged while shopping, having meals, taking taxis and staying at hotels.

Of the various tricks played by locals, "deceptive pricing" was voted the most common, followed by "fake and inferior commodities," "hard selling" and "forcing up prices."

However, according to the survey, most of the victims (about 62.7 percent) had no choice but to suffer the losses without any form of redress; 34.4 percent said they had argued strongly with those who had cheated them; 30.6 percent had filed complaints afterwards; and only 17.8 percent had complained to authorities on the spot.

An official surnamed Sun, who is in charge of publicity in Sanya, told China Daily that the government will further investigate the incidents and conduct more inspections to prevent similar cases.

Yet Wang Xinbin, a former professor at Beijing International Studies University's School of Tourism, argued that "strict inspections and harsh punishment after visitor reports only work for a short period. The root of the cheating lies in the fact that local people didn't get what they deserved during the rapid development of tourism."

"Ticket revenues go to the government and property developers get huge benefits from the rising real estate market, but little is left for local people, so they have to make money illegally from the visitors pouring in," he added. "This also explains cases of overcharging in tourist resorts in other parts of China."

Cold weather in northern areas has also made Hainan a hot tourist destination, another reason for the exorbitant prices, pointed out Liu Simin, a researcher at the Tourism Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"But we should not put all the blame on the supply-demand contradictions; the incidents also reflect supervision loopholes in the tourism sector. Government should properly supervise and regulate the chaotic tourism market," Liu added.

According to the survey by CYD, 91.9 percent of the respondents believed that local supervision and regulatory authorities should take the blame. 72.4 percent were unsatisfied with restaurants that harbored dishonest intentions.

Statistics from Hainan's tourism office show that more than 1 million tourists flooded the province during the Spring Festival holiday, bringing more than 4.3 billion yuan (US$683 million) in tourism-related revenue, up by 61 percent year-on-year.

In such a fast-growing market, the incidents of cheating rang the alarm for local governments that more social, political, cultural and economic reforms are needed to make tourism a strong support for the local economy.

Over the next ten years, China plans to invest 352 billion yuan (US$56 billion) to make Hainan a top international tourist destination by 2020, noted the China Daily.

But critics say that while much of the money is for infrastructure, more needs to be done to improve service, like hospitality, as well as the island's credibility.