Solo travellers from the mainland are flooding Hong Kong's consumer watchdog with complaints of over-the-counter sharp practices.
While the Consumer Council has seen an overall drop in the number of gripes it received this year - down 7 per cent to 13,279 in the first six months - complaints from mainland individual travellers nearly doubled in the first half to 801.
The statistics were released yesterday, a day after a mainland tour leader allegedly assaulted a member of a mainland tour group in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Overall, mainland travellers' complaints were up by nearly a third to 847 in the period, compared with 652 cases at the same time last year. Those filed from tour members dropped to 46 from 168 over the same period.
'The number of complaints from mainland tourists increased because more of them are coming to Hong Kong. Shops also adopted problematic sales tactics,' council chairman Anthony Cheung Bing-leung said.
According to the Tourism Board, visitor arrivals from the mainland reached 10.8 million in the first five months, a fifth more than a year ago. Of the total mainland arrivals in May alone, 63 per cent, or 1.33 million, made their trips under the Individual Visit Scheme, one-third more year on year.
Due to a shift in travel patterns, more complaints are coming from solo travellers. While new guidelines adopted by the Travel Industry Council - the tourism sector's self-regulator - could have helped clampdown on complaints about group tours, it was the government's job to deal with improper sales practices in shops, Consumer Council chief executive Connie Lau Yin-hing said.