China Groups With Optional Tours

This is the month of July. And as usual, the China school holiday started. Initially I was thinking that this month is going to be a very slow season due the earthquake in Sichuan and the Olympic. Luckily that my travel agent is dealing mostly with the Guang Dong group. So, during this period of time, most of the groups come from Guang Dong. So, I was basically tight up with the China groups.

I have been taking 3 China groups consecutively. Two of the groups are the usual routine that is JB in and JB out group, where by the third group is JB in KL out group.

These three groups went on smoothly without any bad incidents.

For the third group, they are from Soon De ( Guang Dong Province ). It is a group with so call super VIP. The reason why I said its so call VIP is because most of the travel agents in China will name their groups the VIP group. So they will need to pay more for better food and hotel. So, usually these type of tourists are more stuck up.

In their itinerary, the Chinese need to pay RMB 350 for optional tours in Malaysia. The optional tour is compulsory because this is in fact to pay to the local travel agent in Malaysia for their lodging and food. The optional tour is actually a special package of tourists spots and special food item. So, for the optional tour in Malaysia, usually it is for the Bak Kut Teh, the Curry Chicken Bread, Putrajaya, KLCC and the traditional Malay house.

It is always very unfortunate for the China tourists because the travel agents there never update what is the latest happening in Malaysia. The biggest problem with the travel agent in China is that they are small travel agents. So, these small travel agents will attract their own customer with all kind of offers. Then because they can't form a group because usually a group has to consist of minimum 16 tourists. So, the small travel agents will past these customers to the bigger travel agent which is also known as the wholesale travel agent.

The small travel agents will usually have all kind or different itineraries with the wholesale travel agent. So, sometimes the tour members itineraries will differ with each other. This is where the problem arise. When we tour guide follow the standard itineraries set by the local travel agent here. So, when we did not go to the tourists spot set by the small travel agent in China, the tourists will definitely make a fuss.

There is a family consists of a couple and a daughter. They pay their tour through the small travel agent. The small travel agent itinerary has the optional tour whereby it has also the historical museum. The problem is that the historical museum which is located near the Dataran Merdeka is close. So, just because of this historical museum, this family is making a lot of fuss.

This family is also one of the so call very miser people. They hardly spend money and have the mentality that we tour guides are there to swindle their money. Throughout the tour, they only buy a little box of chocolate. Sometimes, I really wonder why these China people cant change their mentality of trusting more people.