Tourists have always presented easy targets, but the methods of the con artists have changed over the past 300 years or so.
When famous poets Shelley and Byron headed off on their round-Europe adventures, a little light con artistry was par for the course.– a visit to key artistic sites in Italy, traditionally conducted by upper-class young men in the 18th and 19th centuries – was seen as a way for the nobility to mature and learn life skills. And, if they ran into trouble along the way, so much the better.
Among the traditional scams to be aware of are Paris’s gold ring hoax – where a stranger pretends to pick up a ring you’ve mistakenly dropped as a distraction technique. In Granada, tourists writing on review sites report falling foul of a “pigeon poo” scam, during which a man sprays fake bird faeces on an unsuspecting tourist then pretends to clean it up, stealing valuables in the process.
“Essentially, you get your points, you pay your maintenance fee and you get to go on holiday – if you can ever find the availability,” says Keith Dewhurst of the Timeshare Consumer Association . Sean Tipton of the UK’s travel agent association ABTA has seen an uptick in calls from people who have been scammed on social media, where fraudsters advertise villas and holiday apartments that don’t exist .
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