When I visited a museum in Saint Petersburg with a Russian-speaking Belarusian friend a few years ago, she suggested that she buy the tickets. “Why?” I asked. “Because we will get in much cheaper.”
“Why?”
“Because there is one price for Russians and a much higher price for foreigners. So you just shut up and we will get in cheap.”
As a fairly seasoned traveller, I was not unaccustomed to having pay more than the local population, and I was prepared to do so. But I also like a bargain, so I just shut up and we got in cheap.
A dual pricing system operates in a lot of places, especially poorer countries. It is particularly prevalent in Thailand.
I hadn’t thought about it for a while, until I noticed this story in the Bangkok Post, where a Thai citizen who looks like a farang (foreigner) complains about being charged 10 times as much to enter a popular attraction in Krabi.
“It’s like racism,” he is quoted as saying.
Now the story doesn’t really make it clear whether he is objecting to the dual-pricing system per se or the fact that he was a victim of it on the grounds of mistaken identity.
The logic behind dual pricing is simple. It is, usually correctly, assumed that foreigners can afford to pay more, and accepted that they should subsidise the locals who might not otherwise be able to get in to certain attractions.
But is it fair to charge a different price based on someone’s appearance or passport? There are, after all, rich Thais and poor farang.
Either way, there would be outrage, and almost certainly an action by the discrimination commissioner or some other authority, if a venue in Britain, the US or Australia adopted a policy of ethnicity-based pricing.
