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Foreign tourists at a vendor stall
near Da Lat Market. Coercive “brokers” for souvenir shops in Da Lat have been
beating tour guides for not bringing in tour groups.
Tour guide Tran Tri Dung decided his customers would enjoy a
stop at the Da Lat Market to pick up some souvenirs.
The decision meant his group would pass up several popular
shops outside the market that are known for selling home-style jams, one of
the city’s specialties.
For that, Dung was severely beaten in the street. Twice.
Many specialty shops have unwritten agreements with local tour
guides that the guides will bring their tour groups to the shops for a
commission of up to 30 percent.
Dung refused to do so, and so he was beaten. When he refused a
second time in one day, he was beaten again.
A source told Vietweek that Dung asked for police
protection following the beatings. The police said they could not have
someone follow him all the time and that he should tell them again if it
happened again.
The story reveals the persistent problem that tourists are
often taken to shops that sell low-quality products because tour guides are
on the take, and a culture of shadowy virtual gangsterism governs the show.
“[This kind of] brokering is a common phenomenon at tourist
spots in Vietnam,”
Do Thi Hong Xoan, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, told Vietweekwithout commenting
further on the issue.
Da Lat ‘specialties’
Dung was assaulted twice on September 29 while he led a group
of 140 tourists fromHanoi through Da Lat in Lam Dong Province.
Located on the Langbiang plateau 1,500 meter above sea level, Vietnam’s
famous resort town of Da
Lat is
famous for its temperate climate, beautiful flowers
and fruits.
Among its specialties are preserved fruits, sugared fruits,
jams and jellies.
Dung was assaulted by men who worked for Bao Khanh and Hoai
Nam, two shops that sell such specialties on Nguyen Tu Luc Street, near the Thung Lung Tinh Yeu (Love Valley), and at several other
nearby destinations.
Soon after Dung dropped his tour group off at the Sammy Hotel in Da
Lat, three men approached and told him to take his tourists to the two shops.
When he said he would take them to the Da Lat Market instead, the men began
to beat him to the ground with their motorbike helmets.
At around 2 p.m. the same day, he was beaten again by a man in
front of the Da Lat Flower Garden. He escaped by running into the garden.
According to Nguyen Van My, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City
Tour Guide Association, a leader of Dung’s travel agency, HCMC-based
Vietravel Company, had to call a senior government official in Lam Dong
before police took any action.
Da Lat police now say they have identified the people who
assaulted Dung: Tran Van Quang and two other men, identified only as Hoang and Tam. They said
Quang had admitted to the crime and confessed that the three worked as
brokers for Hoai Nam and Bao
Khanh.
Pham Thi Lan Huong, owner of Bao Khanh, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the shop does
not hire “employees to work outside the shop.”
The paper reported that tour guides in Da Lat are often
threatened by shops.
The shops pay out up to 30 percent of their sales for every
group of tourists that visits. The sum is shared between the “broker,” the
tour guide and the driver, the paper reported.
Even without the work of brokers, many of these shops are
raking in huge profits by selling low-quality products from China that are
re-labeled as their own.
On August 23, Da Lat police dumped 2.3 tons of low quality
jams of Chinese origin. They had inspected 95 specialties shops and found 91
of them violating labeling regulations or selling smuggled products.
Slaps on the wrist
On October 1, a spokesperson from the Lam Dong People’s
Committee, the provincial government, said “jam brokers” are a stubborn
problem that has damaged the province’s reputation in many ways and that the
committee had instructed authorities to take action.
Also on that day, Da Lat Town police force said they had
identified 20 jam brokers and asked them to write and sign a statement that
they would not force tourists into their shops by colluding with drivers and
tour guides.
The town’s deputy chief of police Phan Van Thong said the
coercive jam brokers “have been operating in Da Lat for many years despite
the fact that relevant agencies have carried out many measures.”
He said his agency would take “strong action” in the near
future to put an end to the problem.
But Thong did not elaborate on what would actually be done.
In fact, the police made a similar promise back in 2006, after
several fights between jam brokers in Da Lat.
However, in February 2011, three brokers were arrested and are
still under investigation for allegedly killing a competitor.
Those three brokers were also working for Hoai Nam shop (one
of the alleged employers of the men who beat up Dung). One was Dinh Van
Thuan, the elder brother of the shop owner Thang.
Phung Quy Ngoc, chairman of the Lam Dong Province Tourism
Association, told Vietweek that the problem was difficult to
fix because tourism authorities had only a limited ability to investigate the
shops.
However, when asked for comment about Dung’s assaulted on
September 29, he only said: “I have not heard about this case.”
Asked whether the decision to refuse the brokers was Dung’s
alone, or whether it was company policy, Nguyen Minh Man, chief of communications
at Vietravel only said “the fact that Dung was assaulted is an alarm for
tourism areas.
“There should be stronger intervention by local authorities to
purify the local tourism environment,” he told Vietweek.
‘Tourism mafia’
My, the chairman of the HCMC Tour Guide Association, said two
of the three brokers who assaulted Dung had been fined for similar behavior
last year.
He said many tour guides have been assaulted for trying to
protect their customers from such rip-off schemes. He said most of them work
for small companies and they feared retribution for speaking out.
My himself was assaulted two years ago by a man hired by a
local tourism agency after he told the media that several companies had made
a pact to sell a specific package tour at ten times its actual cost.
“I’m tired and frustrated of fighting the mafia alone,” he
told Vietweek.
“Now there’s another one, Vietravel, to fight [against the
problem]. And the preliminary result was that the tour guide was assaulted.”
He said Da Lat is where the “jam shop prison” model was born
and that it has been duplicated at specialty shops in Nha Trang, Phan Rang,
Phan Thiet, Dong Nai and Ha Long.
“Buying local specialties is what tourists like to do. Other
countries also promote this and pay commissions to tour guides, but it is
controlled to maintain reasonable prices,” he said.
My criticized Khanh Hoa Province authorities,
who have reported that the consumption of fish sauce and fisheries by
tourists has slowed down to economic difficulties.
“My God!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Things are so difficult
that people can’t afford fish sauce [a primary sauce in Vietnam]
to eat? The actual reason is that tourists no longer buy fish sauce after
buying fake products there.”
He said the problem was both lack of governmental and law
enforcement intervention, and unscrupulous practices by many tourism
companies that participate in the “mafia” game.
Dung, the tour guide who was assaulted recently, said he was
still afraid of being attacked again.
“I would not mind if my assault helped improve Vietnam tourism,”
he said. “But we are waiting for strict punishment against the jam brokers
for their brutality.”
Thanh Niên
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