Sunday, June 29, 2008
Dealing with Anti-Social Restaurant Touts
Could you imagine ASBO's for restaurant touts?
It's a phenomenon I'd not come across much in my 16 years in Tenerife, being mostly on my own and trying hard NEVER to look like a tourist, until I walked around Puerto de la Cruz one lunchtime with my mother and we were accosted roughly every 10 paces. Did we look THAT hungry?
Anyway, after just one or two, it gets seriously annoying to have to keep saying, "No thank you, we've just eaten," or whatever excuse. Someone on holiday and faced with a whole 14 days of this is certainly going to get seriously pissed off.
Nigel Tisdall, writing in the Telegraph, says that, "The repeated harassment from restaurant touts is wearying." And the opinion from some on this thread at Holiday Truths, is that they're a pest and that, "If the Tenerife authorities want to stop the decrease in toursits (sic) then this should there (sic) first priority."
They have a point and the customer is always right, remember.
So, I was interested to read this article (via Londonist) saying that a curry touting ban had been introduced to Brick Lane in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London and that a persistent tout has been fined and handed an ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order).
Could such measures ever be implemented in Tenerife, I wonder?
(On the other hand, you might like to get your mates one of these spoof ASBOs form Gadget Pages: if they're coming to the touristy bit of Tenerife, the chance that they'll disgrace themselves in public, is, we fear, quite high! :)
2 Comments:
David Parkes wrote (on
August 03, 2008)
Its the same story with the Timeshare touts offering scratch-cards. In the borough of Arona (which includes Los Cristianos and Playa de las Americas). The Policia Local have clamped down on the companies employing them. Slapping 1500 Euro fines on them for each scratch-card tout they caught.
However, all they have succeeded in doing is forcing the Timeshare companies to relocate their sales decks to the neighbouring borough of Adeje. The touts remain on the streets in Los Cristianos and Playa de las Americas and all the Police can do is move them along when they catch them. But as there is no-longer any money to be gained from the fines, this is once again becoming a low policing priority.
Sounds pretty awful. I remember getting irritated by restaurant touts in Mallorca and Venice. Luckily we don't have touts here (Seychelles), except for a handful of guys selling boat excursions. And they, in keeping with "the island way" are not too persistent.