You can plan a holiday down to the last detail, but you can never prepare for the setbacks you encounter along the way. These come in many forms, from the sleight of hand of a taxi driver to daylight robberies of licensed hotel companies.
Our core destination experts and in-house editors have traveled to every corner of the planet and have built up many years of experience between them. So hopefully it will provide some comfort, the next time you find yourself in a sticky situation, that they too can be scammed along the way.
Magic trick in Venice
By Nick Trend
When I was 19 and traveling around Europe on a budget of £10 a day, I camped in Punta Sabbioni on the mainland next to Venice. At the end of a busy and impatient queue, I paid for my waterbus ticket to St. Marks with a 50,000 lira note – worth about £25 at the time. On the boat I realized that, instead of four 10,000 lira notes as the bulk of my change, the man at the counter had only given me one – plus three 1,000 lira notes cleverly tucked behind it. I had cynically been left short by 27,000 lire – more than £15 – a large chunk of my budget.
An empty wallet in Iceland
By Mike Maceacharan
I may be a professional traveler (sort of), but I’m not completely immune to holiday rip-offs, and – in my eyes – Iceland is the king of rip-offs; the big daddy of daylight robberies. Twenty-five quid for a takeaway chip from a street food van? That one hurts. Sixteen quid for a bagel with an almost invisible smear of cream cheese making the inside soggy? That hurts more.
And that’s just the tip of the glacial iceberg. I recently visited the Snæfellsnes Peninsula on a gray October trip full of seasonal cold and had to pay £300 for an everyday lodge, without breakfast but with a complimentary wet dog scent. The further surprise was a hassle-free dinner costing £67 for one. The portion size left me hungry or, as an Icelander would say, it was “ekki upp i nos a ketti”. Not enough to fill a cat’s nostril. And with car hire it all came to over £500 for one day. Sheesh.
An inflated rickshaw fare
By Gemma Ridder
There are those wonderful moments when you see a scammer coming from miles away and manage to avoid him. I still feel a pang of smugness when I think of the taxi driver in Shanghai who, without realizing I lived there, tried to take me miles in the wrong direction to jack up the fare. The look on his face when I launched into a tirade in perfect Mandarin from the backseat still brings me great joy.
I wasn’t so lucky during a visit to Amritsar, India, when I asked a rickshaw driver to take me a few miles away. A typically lengthy negotiation ensued; I spoke to him about what I considered to be, if not very cheap, then certainly fair, and off we went. When we arrived, I looked down to count my rupees, and when I looked up, the driver had been joined by twenty of his friends – all tall and unsmiling. “The price has tripled,” he told me. A difficult situation, which no amount of Mandarin would help me get out of. In the interest of fighting another day, I put my pride aside and paid.
A close call in Naples
By Rachel Cranshaw
Last year I arrived in Naples by train and took a taxi from the stand outside the station. We asked the driver if he accepted card payments, which he said he did, and we agreed on the rate as there was no meter. But when we got to our hotel the card payment failed. We said we would try another card, but he wouldn’t let us and insisted on taking us to an ATM, at a now hugely high rate that we had little choice but to pay.
It set a sour tone for the entire visit. Later that day, I was walking down the street with a group of four women when a few of us paused to check our phones for directions. We realized that two men were standing in front of us and signaling to each other that they were about to rob us. For safety we had to duck into a supermarket.
Many people have told me how much they love Naples, despite its reputation for being a bit rough, but as a generally savvy traveler I was disappointed and embarrassed that I had had such a stereotypical experience of the city. I would love to go back one day and try it again.
Daylight robbery at dawn
By Chris Moss
Fancy hotels are snakes and con artists: they hit customers for excessive deposits; they bedevil anyone who fancies a cheeky miniature; they charge ridiculous rates. But their biggest rip-off is room service – the insane profit margin for merely delivering an item to a room. As I checked into a five-star hotel after a long and miserable overnight flight, I said I would like some breakfast. The desk staff smiled submissively and said there was no need to brave the dining room: they would send something to my room.
Half an hour later, when I had almost given up, a small selection of items from the all-you-can-eat buffet arrived: a strawberry cut into ten strips, a cooling coffee, a few rolls and wasteful mini jars of jam. I was later billed $30 for the privilege. I know, I fell for a trick. I was given a mug – or rather, I was simply robbed.
An opportunistic seller in Kerala
By Chris Leadbeater
On my first two mornings while staying at a simple hotel in Kerala, I saw a man standing on the beach with items of clothing he wanted to buy, hoping that a tourist would emerge from one of the rooms above. But it was a quiet time, off-season for Kerala. So on my third morning I decided I would do the deed.
The clothing was actually of reasonable quality. He had a selection of Nehru collar shirts, in different primary colours. He had brightly colored scarves and an array of well-made pashminas. So well made, in fact, that I decided I could mass-purchase a whole host of future birthday and Christmas presents. I chose about nine of them and prepared to pay him.
I’m still not sure why the conversation went the way it did. But when he suggested a number, I panicked, threw out just a few hundred rupees and waited for his answer. He turned a little pale, agreed, shook my hand and we completed the transaction. It wasn’t until I returned to my room and looked up the latest exchange rate that I realized I had paid a European price for my shopping trip.
I haven’t seen the seller again. Delighted with his windfall, he had clearly taken the weekend off.