Hard selling hawkers disturb tourists

Hard selling hawkers disturb tourists

By Rob Goodfellow

DENPASAR (JP): Made is 26 years old. Like a thousand or so
other young men from Bali, Java and Madura, he works for the
Kapten, an Indonesian Army Officer from East Java who holds one
of the official licenses to vend souvenirs on the streets of Kuta
and Legion. Each member of the Kapten's club pays Rp 15,000 to
sign up and Rp 3,000 to renew their membership each month. This
arrangement gives young men like Made the opportunity to wear a
numbered yellow shirt and sell watches or silver jewelry to one
of the thousands of bargain hunting visitors who ply the
backstreets of Bali's tourist mecca every day.

Like all members of the club, Made buys his box of goods, in
this case cheap watches made in Surabaya, directly from the
Kapten. Each watch, which some call "visa watches" because they
only last until your holiday ends, costs Rp 15,000 (US$6.66).
Anything Made takes on top, minus the club fees, is his to keep.
On a good day it can add up to Rp 30,000. On a bad day, nothing.

Kuta's hawkers say trade is very slow this year. Frustration
has led to the hard-sell, confrontation and abuse. Most tourists
learn to ignore the hawkers, but there have been recent reports
of threats, pushing, pinching and punching as the heat, the
crowds, the dust and the toxic clouds of vehicle exhaust fray the
tempers of both the hunter and the hunted.

According to Denpasar-based anthropologist I. Gusti Made
Santikarma (Degung), what is happening on the streets of Kuta is
a visible representation of social change in Bali. Degung
maintains that, "to the street hawkers each tourist seems like a
millionaire. They are the ones who stay in expensive hotels. They
are the ones who pull out their bulging wallets with a year's
income for an ordinary Indonesian wage laborer to pay for a
cheese and tomato jaffle. Why are you surprised that the street
sellers are starting to fight back? They are frustrated and
confused. Life in Kuta has become very fast.

"Twenty years ago Legia was a coconut groove. Now it is
virtually a city. Anyway, you have to remember it was the Aussies
who taught the hawkers how to swear. And now their words have
come back to haunt them," he explained.

But it is more than a war of words. The Bali hard-sell takes
many forms, but all demonstrate an appalling lack of cultural
insight into the buying behavior of Western tourists.

"Hawkers cannot hide their contempt for us", says Allison from
Sydney who comes to Bali every year on holiday.

"I think that in their hearts they hate us for who we are and
what we represent. They see what we have and they want it. When
we don't buy they become aggressive and abusive. Sometimes I feel
really frightened," Rose from Melbourne explained. "Why should I
want to buy one of their cheap watches? I don't like what they
sell and I don't like the way they never leave you alone, even
when you are eating. We don't treat our overseas guests like
that, why should I put up with their ignorant behavior," she
added.

The antipathy of tourists towards the hawkers is
understandable when you consider the techniques the hawkers
employ. Hawkers will follow a tourist until "they catch their
eye." If possible they will learn their prey's name and then
never stop using it. They will follow tourists into shops and
restaurants. Unfortunately, the street salesmen operate on the
assumption that enough pressure will ultimately land a sale.

After "What's your name?" comes the sales pitch. This starts
off hard and then gets harder. "You buy, cheap price, what you
want, you tell me your price" it continues. The hawker becomes
pushy, often grabbing the person's hand, often thrusting their
product right into their prey's face.

"You buy! Just 10,000!" A refusal is greeted with angry words.
Reciprocal aggression on the part of tourist is matched by
physical abuse from the hawker. They push, spit on the ground and
curse.

All this betrays the most basic principle of sales -- there
must be an interest and then a desire to buy. Hard-sell works
only when subtle enough not to be recognized for what it really
is. The Kuta hawkers destroy the atmosphere in which the desire
to buy is created.

Unfortunately the trend towards hard-sell is not isolated to
Jalan Kuta hawkers. Rachel from Wollongong complains that she was
abused and humiliated by the staff of the taxi service at Ngurah
Rai Airport. She described how one attendant hissed "ten
thousand, ten thousand" at her -- a price double the prescribe
taxi fare to her destination. When Rachel said she wouldn't pay
that amount, the employee responded by humiliating her in front
of a long line of other tourists, "Then you can just walk lady --
go, go!"

Experiences like this are now common place around Kuta. John,
an American from San Francisco, had his traveler's cheques stolen
on the ferry from Lombok. When he respectfully asked an employee
of the local Wartel (telecommunications depot) to make a collect
call to American Express, the response was a crude attempt to
extort money by insisting that the now broke visitor use their
service.

Like all forms of Bali hard-sell, John's experience is a
betrayal of the basic spirit of generosity towards guests and a
serious miscalculation about how much foreign tourists are
prepared to tolerate.

Made and three other hawkers a stalking their prey, an obese
and perspiring middle-aged Australian woman. "Why don't you f---
off!" her husband threatens, or I'll smack your f----- face in!"

A tourist bus full middle aged Japanese tourists roars by,
engulfing the players in a cloud of diesel exhaust. Made sees a
family of blonde, sunburned and heavily hair-beaded Germans on
the other side of the road. Sensing a kill he pauses only long
enough to curse the fat woman's husband. Another tourist who will
make a point to never buy anything as long as he lives from a
Kuta street hawker.