Chinese box

Russians complain about fraudulent tourism business schemes from the PRC

There are more and more Chinese tourists in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities every year - it is easy to notice, especially in the spring and summer, even just walking along the streets or going to museums.

It would seem that a joyful fact: more tourists-more income, but if you develop this simple thought to the Chinese guide-translator, it will only grin of your naivety. And he will say that it is more profitable to serve ten European tourists than a thousand Chinese, and he will say this not from reprehensible reasons of a racist nature, but exclusively guided by his own bitter experience. Why this is happening and what is this experience - we are talking about this with the president of the regional public organization "St. Petersburg Association of Guides-Transporters from the Chinese language" Victoria Bargacheva, her deputy Polina Rusakova and a member of the Association Yana Savitskaya .

It is more profitable to serve ten European tourists than a thousand Chinese

-My first question is to Polina Rusakova: who is to blame for the situation-are your Chinese colleagues who, from your point of view, are engaged in dishonest business-or is it also beneficial for someone in Russia?

- The first problem is that officials do not help us, but only complicate the work. The second problem is in the desire of the Chinese tourism business to work here according to a scheme that closes all their activities on itself.

- Victoria, do you, as the head of the association, agree with this?

- Yes, Chinese tourism has long become the phenomenon of international economics acting according to its laws. There are many Chinese, we were very happy when the flow of tourists from China increased, but in fact the problem is that in China itself there are a lot of fraudulent schemes in the tourist business. The Chinese government fights with them, like those large countries where the Chinese make up a large share of entry tourism.

Unfortunately, from our officials we hear only enthusiastic Ahi and Okhi: the stream is growing! And to talk about the problems related to the industry somehow, although the problems are serious. The fraudulent schemes that are developed in China are now expelled from there, but they flourish with us, and those who must track these problems are silent. Polina correctly said: fraudulent schemes lead to the fact that the local economy does not receive almost anything from the increasing flow of Chinese tourists. For example, Thailand recently voiced data on which the country almost did not make a profit, although all the flights are filled and all the beaches are busy.

- How is it? After all, if tourists come to the country, then they go to the hotel, to the museum, to the restaurant, which should deduct taxes on their profit to the budget. Why doesn't this happen?

- Let's look at the situation on the example of Novgorod - a very popular place for Chinese tourists now. The Novgorod government, business, museums were full of expectations, because usually tourists consume services, transport, food and excursion services. It was assumed that jobs will be created, that deductions will go to the budget and the maintenance of architectural monuments.

- Polina, what does it really happen?

Officials do not help us, but only complicate the work

- In fact, everything is limited only to food. Excursion service is reduced to the inspection from the outside and the story of the guide from St. Petersburg, so they do not need a local guide. The hotel is not needed either - the tour is one -day. And food occurs in Chinese restaurants. So these are jobs only for the Chinese diaspora, and not for the local population.

“But how is it all in practice, Victoria?”

- There are rules by which an individual visitor enters the Novgorod Kremlin and Sofia freely, but organized groups must take tickets and pay for the guide services. Chinese fraudulent companies believe: why pay where you can not pay? You can tell all the tourists on the bus and launch them inside as individual visitors without explaining any rules, without saying that during the service in Sofia you can not take pictures and talk loudly. It also turns out to be a deception of consumers: they sell a full -fledged service, but in fact, not a penny is spent on her organization. Buses depreciate the roads, Chinese tourists are shocking public places, but the only one who benefited from this is the Chinese pseudo -entrepreneur, who underground the restaurant underground. There is no more ruble in Novgorod.

- That is, Chinese fraudulent companies are deceiving not only Russian partners, but also the Chinese themselves?

Chinese fraudulent companies believe: why pay where you can not pay?

- That's right. But all complaints are written in China itself, we collect them on sites, try to show our executive organs, tell what is happening, but they answer us: if we were complained directly to us, then we could consider this complaint, and this is the third side with which we have no relationship. That is, officials simply turn a blind eye to this problem.

Victoria Bargacheva

- Now there are publications that Rosturism wants to train foreign guides. Yana, your comment.

- The Chinese stream is increasing every year, in the field of tourism this causes positive expectations - among hotel owners, restaurants. But suddenly an interesting thing becomes clear - supposedly to receive Chinese groups there is not enough labor. Since Rosturism itself does not always have information in details, he turns to experts, and very often these experts are interested in the benefit of not the Russian, namely the Chinese side.

- Polina, how does this happen?

-We suspect that structures acting as experts, who are now becoming the official flagships of the promotion of Russian-Chinese tourism, may themselves be interested in maintaining this situation. This is the Association "World without Borders" and various small firms associated with it, all kinds of LLCs. They are the locomotives of the latest transformations, in particular initiatives, offering to create new professions, new training courses.

The last sentence is to create a new profession: a guide translator for working with tourists from the PRC; Allegedly not enough personnel. But we are (this is about 300 guides in St. Petersburg), there are guides in other cities, in the Far East, in Kazan. But they don’t hear us, we are all the time that we are not enough, and therefore we need to create new professions, it is said that foreign citizens can receive them. That is, they directly tell us that the Chinese can also hire this job.

A predatory scheme for using the tourist resources of our country is proposed: they arrived, consumed, left, took out incomes to themselves

And then, we have a clear understanding of what a guide translator is: this is a person serving the local tourist industry in a particular region. We are offered to introduce the profession of the accompanying person - the one who will accompany tourists on the entire route, not tied to a particular region. And this means that he does not have a license to work in local museums, but a local guide is needed only as an entrance ticket, a live license for passing to the museum. We believe that this is a substitution of concepts: we are offered a new profession when we are - and therefore, they want to move us, turn us into walking licenses.

This new profession of the accompanying person is an ideal thing for the implementation of the very fraudulent scheme that is being discussed: the China is met by the China, he works here, respectively, the question arises - where are all the income from this group go? It is clear that they will not be spent in Russia, but in China. A predatory, parasitic scheme for using the tourist resources of our country is proposed: they arrived, consumed, left, took out the income to their own. It seems to us as Russian citizens such a scheme to the wild and destroying the tourist future of our country, ”said Polina Rusakova .

Comment by Victoria Bargacheva :

-The Russian-Chinese tourist exchange is valid as part of the intergovernmental agreement of 2001 on visa-free exchange. We are talking about a visa -free exchange of organized groups, and not individual tourists. The problem is not only in guides, it is much wider: about 80% of such groups are served not by Russian companies. Just the guides were more consolidated.

The guide is a very important figure, it is a guarantee of protection of national interests

The guide is a very important figure, it is a guarantee of protecting national interests, but it can also act as the main mechanism for fraudulent schemes, which is happening. The question of whether a foreign citizen can be a guide can be translated as follows: we are for fraudulent schemes or against them? Those who are lobbying for these schemes and the crowding out of the Russian business have been carrying out systematic attacks on the profession of a guide for two years. They began in February last year, when the Minister of Labor Maxim Topilin decided to turn off the profession of a guide from among the quoted. Now any foreigner to work in Russia must draw up a number of documents. It must be proved that there are not enough such specialists in this region, and only then the Ministry of Labor allows you to hire foreigners, that is, quota occurs.

We never understood why Topilin wanted to exclude the profession of a guide a year ago - then foreigners would poured to these places. But a year ago, guides-translators, guides and all caring people in the whole country stood together and said that this simply could not be. The attack was repulsed, but after three months, Rosturism said that there were few of us, the Chinese did not understand us (that is not true), and made the initiative to introduce a new position of the accompanying person. We also repelled this initiative with the whole country and already hoped that a new edition of the Tourism Law would soon be adopted, where it would be clearly said that only a Russian citizen can work with a guide.

We are not racists, we are not against people with one or another skin color and eye cut. It’s just that when this rule is not, it turns out that in May all the planes from the PRC are filled with pseudo -Gids who come here for two months, and then all the earned is taken away without participating in Russian economic life.

-Polina, tell me, this problem concerns only guides-translators from Chinese?

- No, this is a real Pandora box: in the same way, Iran citizens and citizens of the near abroad are not averse to earn.

Polina Rusakova

- Let us return to the mechanism of this fraudulent scheme. Everything is clear with restaurants-tourists are taken only to Chinese, with guides too-their services are simply not bought, but what happens to the hotels-you can’t help but stop in them. Yana, what is the mechanism?

-Suppose a hotel has a reservation for some tourists. A Chinese comrade comes and pays in cash, dug these numbers. The French, the Spaniards, the Germans come, and they have nowhere to live.

Comment by Polina Rusakova :

Such schemes are built on personal relationships and nowhere not taken into account of cash

- Such schemes are built on personal relationships and nowhere not taken into account of cash. They erode the legal framework of relationships, which we still try to adhere to. And then you came to the hotel and gave a bribe a middle level manager, bought a reservation for the current summer months. Because of this, the hotel sphere also becomes corrupt, it is impossible to conduct business-you can be sent a letter at any moment: "Oh, sorry!" And this "sorry" is connected with the China citizen who established personal relations with the hotel administrator.

- Victoria, are this ways of deception exhausted?

- Here is another way. We have the Tsarskoye Selo-reserve museum , in recent years there just a boom, an influx of visitors to the palace, so the leadership has to rack their heads all the time, how to make everyone get there: to breed foreign and Russian groups organized and individual visitors. Last summer, people stood in lines in front of the palace for three to four hours, lost consciousness. Therefore, the order was introduced according to which tickets were sold outside the palace at any time: you can come at ten in the morning and buy a ticket for two hours when you are convenient.

A whole industry arises from the invasion of Chinese scammers from tourism

This would be a great solution if it were not for fraudulent firms that decided to earn extra money. For several days, by eight in the morning, buses with Chinese students drove up, bought all the tickets at the checkout and then sold their compatriots or already Russian travel agencies. It seems that the law does not prohibit this, but for some reason no one did it, considering it low, vile and unworthy, and scammers think-why not? And when the whole sector for the reception of tourists experiences such blows from all sides, when all the elements of the reception are corrupt, the whole industry is destroyed. This is exactly what is happening in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Irkutsk and Vladivostok, it is impossible to work, a whole industry is getting from the invasion of Chinese scammers from tourism.

- They say that Petersburg is the first city where they began to catch illegal guides from China. Polina, are you familiar with this situation?

- Yes, we ourselves did not catch, we do not have such rights, but we were attracted as translators. Unfortunately, the Chinese came out of the water dry. Sometimes it reached the trial - for example, they catch such a “guide” in the museum, and he only has permission to work as a cook, and then in Moscow, and not in St. Petersburg. And the same story begins - they say, I accidentally walked here, met compatriots and talked with them, so we are here for two hours in the museum.

The installations of the inspection bodies are important here - they are ready to bring such cases to the end or not. While such cases are not fully done, there were only a couple of cases when they were sent from the country, and so they get off with ridiculous fines - three thousand rubles, or something. For comparison-if someone in a feverish delirium turns into the head to work with such an illegal guide in China, then he will be deported the next day without the right to return, it is very strict with this. And we do not seem to notice this.

- Yana, you also participated in the capture of illegal Chinese guides - is it true that in museums they often carry real nonsense?

Chinese guides say that all Russians are alcoholics, so women here dream to marry a foreigner

- For example, they say that all Russians are alcoholics, so women here dream of marrying a foreigner, and it is for the Chinese. Almost all Chinese groups are burning that in Russia people do not pay for utilities, that everything is free here, there is no rent, that Putin personally gives each woman a stroller.

Yana Savitskaya

- Victoria, do you also have something to remember?

- They say that women in Russia seek not to marry, but to raise a child on their own, since the state then completely contains him up to 18 years. They love to tell that the basis of the Orthodox faith is the worship of gold, hence the gold domes, so you must buy something golden in Russia. The source of this lies is not ignorance. Firstly, secondary education in China represents Russia not as an older brother, but as a country that has seized the territory east of the Urals from China in the past. Secondly, it’s bad to talk about Russians profitable for scammers. For example, tourists say that all Russians get a lot and work little. And when a fraudster has a conflict with the Russian side - let's say, when he asks him to provide him an unpaid service, at least bring luggage to the hotel, he is very easy for him to respond to reproaches. Tourists ask - we paid for this, why is there no service? They answer: and these are Russians - all scammers and lazy people.

- Polina, your examples?

- Tourists who paid for an expensive bus can be put in a bad, without air conditioning, and when they are outraged, they are told that all the buses are bad here, and in addition they were deceived.

- Victoria, who can and should fight this?

Tour operators should not allow these fraudulent schemes

- Tour operators should not allow these fraudulent schemes, but, unfortunately, we often have a tour operator himself for a small money sells fraudulent Chinese travel agencies the right to serve Chinese groups. They should not do this, receiving a momentary benefit of ten dollars per person-because of this, in a year, normal Chinese tourism will end.

The associations of tour operators and those authorities that regulate this direction, in particular Rosturism, should fight this. But they invite the company interested in continuing fraudulent schemes as experts, and therefore incorrect decisions are made, nothing is done.

- Yana, from your point of view, what needs to be done?

-We hope for as soon as possible the adoption of the law on tourism, where it will be clearly stated that only a citizen of the Russian Federation can work as a translator.

Яна Савицкая , Полина Русакова и Виктория Баргачева очень сожалеют о том, что этот законопроект уже несколько лет лежит в Госдуме без движения. Что же касается туристической ассоциации "Мир без границ", то в ее петербургском офисе нам не смогли дать комментарии.