By Chung Hyun-chae
Many foreign tourists suffer from inconvenience due to the lack of hospitality from shop owners and taxi drivers here, the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) said Friday.
According to the KTO’s tourist complaint reports for 2014, foreign visitors reported 888 to the organization.
Of these, 317 were related to shopping, accounting for 35.7 percent.
Most of the complainers said they had experienced arguments with shop owners over the prices of products.
A Hong Kong tourist surnamed Chow reported a health food store, saying, “An employee asked me if I was a member of tour group or an individual traveler and I answered the latter. He then treated me unfriendly and said that only group tourists were eligible for a discount on any products.”
The second most reported complaints were about taxi services, with the number of complaints standing at 128, taking up 14.4 percent.
More than half of the people dissatisfied with taxi services said that taxi drivers overcharged fares without running the meter.
“As I didn’t know the reasonable price for taxi fare in Korea, I paid the price the cabby asked,” Julio Zanchi, 23-year-old Italian student, told The Korea Times.
Meanwhile, 84 complaints were about accommodation while 74 related to airports and airlines.
According to the report, the number of complaints the KTO received has risen since 2009, along with the growing number of foreign tourists to Korea.
In particular, as more than 6 million Chinese visited Korea in 2014, the number of complaints reported by Chinese tourists amounted to 602.
The organization has been operating a complaint report center to solve problems experienced by foreign and domestic tourists.