Hong Kong Outlook

Are Japanese Tourists Welcome in Hong Kong?

By VIVIAN CHIU

Hong Kong's tourist industry is in a slump. It is not being helped by the Asian financial turmoil and the bird flu crisis. Nobody seems to be choosing Hong Kong as a holiday destination.

In 1996, 2.4 million Japanese visited Hong Kong and spent HK$18.5 billion (¥3 trillion), making them Hong Kong's most important market. But the Japanese are evidently traveling elsewhere for holidays, with numbers down 59 percent for the period from July to November 1997 compared with the same period in 1996.

Hong Kong could blame the Mainichi Shimbun, which made the Japanese very angry when it published an article last October about how unscrupulous Hong Kong travel agents were charging Japanese visitors inflated prices for hotel rooms. The Hong Kong Economic Times reprinted the article, which was picked up by most local papers the next day. While chief executive Tung Chee-hwa and action star Jackie Chan went to Japan trying to woo back Japanese tourists, the South China Morning Post decided to do something different.

My colleague Charmaine Chan, who speaks Japanese, and I did an experiment to see if Japanese tourists really are perceived as easy prey to be tricked or pushed into spending as much money as possible. Charmaine posed as a Japanese tourist while I played the role of a local.

At a camera shop, Charmaine bargained down a Nikon F5 camera to HK$16,000 (¥266,080). I, however, quickly got the "best price" of HK$14,800 (¥246,124) when I walked in 15 minutes later. Afterwards, we returned to the store together to inquire about the different offers.

"You were given the local price," a salesman told me in Cantonese. "But if your friend really wants to buy the camera, we'll give it to her for $14,800."

At a tailor shop, it was the same story ― Charmaine had to pay HK$400 (¥6,652) more than I do for a two-piece cashmere suit.

We ate lunch at Yung Kee restaurant, a favorite of so many Japanese that management has produced a menu just for them. We found out that the Japanese menu contained only 25 dishes as compared to more than 200 on the regular menu. Another difference was that the first half of the Japanese menu was taken up with set banquets with shark's fin, such as the one that cost HK$650 (¥10,809) for one person.

After we reported our findings in the South China Morning Post, three Japanese national dailies published our article. I was interviewed by BBC World Service while Charmaine was interviewed by Fuji TV about our story. As for Yung Kee restaurant, it has now withdrawn the Japanese menu and hired a Japanese waitress instead.

"Japanese are very innocent and they readily believe people so they are easily deceived. Also they don't bargain," said Yoshiyuki Yoshioka, secretary-general of the Hong Kong Japanese Club.

"Japanese used to come to Hong Kong to shop for brand-name goods. But now prices in Hong Kong are the same as in Japan," he said.

In the Peninsula Hotel shopping arcade, a saleslady at Gucci says in the last six months, her store has lost almost half of its Japanese customers. Mitsukoshi Department Store, whose main customers were Japanese tourists, also reports heavy losses.

In reacting to the slump, the Hong Kong Tourist Association will launch a drive in March to promote courtesy among retailers and the public.

If you go to large department stores or chain stores, the prices are fixed and usually there's no bargaining. The stores are "safe" and they are places where Hong Kong people like to shop. Some of the fancy Japanese department stores like Matsuzakaya, Mitsukoshi, Sogo and Daimaru, where you can buy name brands, are concentrated in Causeway Bay.

Apart from chain stores and department stores, you can bargain with the individual shops. Always bargain, don't just accept the shop's ticket price.

If you go to individual electrical shops in Tsim Sha Tsui or Mongkok to buy a camera or CD player, be careful. After you have chosen the model you want, the salesman will ask the shop assistant to go get it from the stock. While he is away, the salesman may try to persuade you to spend just a few hundred or thousand more dollars to get a "better" model and convince you to buy it. Also make sure the shop is selling you the whole equipment, and not charging you extra for parts.

When my sister and I were high school students, we saved our money very diligently to buy the latest model Sony walkman. We went to a Mongkok shop and the salesman tricked us into buying a "better" Toshiba model for only HK$300 (¥4,989) more. We later found out the Toshiba one was an old model and was a lot cheaper than the Sony. Many tourists have been cheatedlike we were.

I think Hong Kong is a beautiful city. It has a lot of tourist attractions, world-class hotels and is a shopping hub.The people are hardworking and efficient. But our image is tarnished by greedy shop owners, who think of nothing but how to rip off their customers. To regain our tourists' confidence, the government should crack down on any malpractice in the tourist industry and emulate the success of our tourist rivals.

Shukan ST: Feb. 6, 1998

(C) All rights reserved