Rich tourists an easy target for robbers abroad
Luxury brands and tour agencies are seemingly not the only ones noticing the growing wealth of Chinese tourists and their tendency to carry large sums in cash.
A group of nine mainland tourists in the Swedish capital Stockholm were recently robbed of about 1.6 million yuan (HK$1.86 million) in cash and possessions in a smash-and-grab raid on their tour bus while they ate at a nearby restaurant, media reports said.
The restaurant owner, Dai Peicong , told reporters that the group wore bright clothes, laughed loudly and ate in a private room.
'They were quite high profile and left all of their possessions on the bus,' he said.
The group were identified by Swedish media as bosses of major coal mines and it was reported their loss was a record for Chinese visitors to Scandinavia. Experts say it shows a growing crime trend.
'Asian groups, especially from China and also Japan, are now common victims for criminals,' Peter Enell, head of Stockholm's Serious Theft Taskforce, said.
'Many criminals know that these groups have a lot of cash on them, as card payment systems in their own countries are not so prevalent. They also normally have expensive cameras and other items with them,' he said.
Enell said that as well as this theft there were two smaller incidents involving Asian tour groups in the last week of September alone. 'Each time the groups came back to find a window smashed and their money and possessions gone.'
Despite a nominal ban on taking more than 20,000 yuan out of the mainland, and a need to declare anything above Euro10,000 (HK$108,500) upon entering Sweden, the group - reportedly on a tour that also took in Denmark and would eventually end in Pakistan - appeared to have been carrying far more than that, a habit criminals are said to be increasingly aware of.
'Recently, we are seeing more and more crimes like this,' Liu Yu, a press liaison officer at the Chinese embassy in Stockholm, said.
'We have put out a warning on our website's homepage to try to tell Chinese tourists travelling to Sweden that it is not necessarily a safe country and that they shouldn't carry so much cash.'
Carl Bravo, a sales assistant at the Gucci store in Stockholm, said: 'Every day we see groups of rich Chinese tourists coming into the store to shop.
'They are not quite our biggest spenders but if it is the final stop on their trip they spend a lot, and often in euros.'
As the group of coal mine bosses did not go to the embassy to report the loss of their passports, Liu was unable to give more details of the group's origins, and police could not comment further apart from saying that the investigation had not led to any arrests.
'It is a big problem all over Europe,' Enell said.
Enell thought it unlikely that these specific criminals were expecting to find nearly as much as 1.6 million yuan in cash and goods when they targeted the tour group at the Stockholm restaurant, but he warned prospective visitors that 'if criminals see wealthy Asian tour groups coming out of cars without possessions they know they [the possessions] must be in the car still'.
Big spenders
Chinese tourists are said to carry large amounts of cash
This is despite an official ban on taking more than this amount, in yuan, in cash out of the mainland: 20,000 yuan
