Hong Kong is being touted as a "shoppers paradise" by purveyors of illegal zero-fee tours, as Shenzhen prepares for thousands of visitors to this year's World University Games.

Fraudulent advertisements already had popped up. Four Shenzhen travel agencies have been charged with organizing illegal tours for mainland visitors to Hong Kong.

Each company was fined 100,000 yuan and ordered to suspend operations for two months. But tens of thousands of yuan have already been lost by victims who booked the illegal tours, the Shenzhen government revealed at a Thursday media conference.

"Illegal cross-border tourism activities have been there for a long time, yet the university games, which would attract numerous visitors to Shenzhen, and further to Hong Kong, had evoked the fire of the devil," said Yi Nengquan, director of the Shenzhen Sports and Tourism Bureau.

In the past few months the spate of complaints has concerned illegal tours or money fraud, said Yi.

The Shenzhen Strait International Travel Agency, Shenzhen Jiangnan Travel Agency Limited, Shenzhen Luya Conference and Exhibition Planning Limited had been shut down by local police after being caught for fraud. Authorities said the companies charged money for outbound tours to Hong Kong while in fact no such tours existed.

Shenzhen Pengyun International Travel Agency Limited was found charging an extra 700 yuan for each tourist from Hong Kong travel agencies, under the name of the "zero-fee tour". It was expected that any such tours that came off would end in so-called coerced shopping.

The Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong said it had also noticed what it suspected to be illegal activities among Hong Kong tour guides recently.

The council noticed that some tour guides have directly arranged tour-guiding and transfer services for inbound tours organized by mainland tour operators, instead of via registered Hong Kong travel agencies.

Given the consideration that operating licenses of such mainland travel operators cannot be verified, consequently, such tour guides are also suspected of having violated the Travel Agents Ordinance. The council has referred the cases to the Travel Agents Registry for follow-up actions.

The Shenzhen government says it is closely watching the issue and would consider a joint crack down on illegal tours if necessary.

The 26th Summer Universiad 2011 takes place in Shenzhen from August 12 to 23.

China Daily

(HK Edition 06/18/2011 page1)