The rising number of consumer complaints has sparked a call for laws banning misleading advertisements, deceptive leaflets, product labels and sales techniques.
In a recent sampling, the Consumer Council found more than half of 1,777 adverts in newspapers and periodicals contained questionable claims.
Real estate adverts topped the list of dubious claims (92 per cent), followed by beauty, fitness and slimming adverts (85 per cent), and medicine, health food and therapy adverts (84 per cent).
Outgoing council chairman Anna Wu Hung-yuk said there was an urgent need to rein in unscrupulous advertisers who were using misleading statements to lure buyers into bad deals.
The council wanted the Government to implement measures to curtail misleading advertising and was seeking public comment on ways to do this.
Options range from laws banning misleading adverts and unfair trade practices to the creation of an Advertising Standards Authority to regulate the industry.
Ms Wu warned that dubious advertisements and tricky sales methods could ruin the local tourist industry. 'This is of tremendous concern in the current economic environment. We don't want to present Hong Kong as a trap for tourists,' she said.