Visitors wander streets at night after row with tour guide

Even as the government was making public its proposals for reforming the tour industry, yet another group of mainland tourists were complaining of ill-treatment by a guide who said they hadn't spent enough on a shopping trip.

The group of 15 from Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, said they had been put in substandard accommodation after the guide told them that if they didn't spend more it would affect where they stayed and what they had for dinner.

'We deliberately signed up for the HK$3,200 sightseeing tour and not the HK$1,600 shopping tour ... we already spent over HK$20,000 [as a group] in total, and she still thought it wasn't enough,' a member of the Golden Harbour-International Travel Agency tour, Chen Bijiao, said yesterday.

'She sneered at us and said other groups spent more than HK$40,000.'

Unable to accept the accommodation offered to them on Thursday night, the group wandered the streets, eventually seeking police help after being unable to contact their guide.

They were moved from the Hilltop Country Club in Tsuen Wan, where they said the rooms were dirty, to the Rambler Oasis Hotel in Tsing Yi, with the extra cost of their rooms paid by Golden Harbour, the Hong Kong agency handling their tour.

Their tour, costing HK$3,200 per person, included three days in Hong Kong and a day in Macau.