What we pay, and how to check it

The standard model here, and why it is a problem

The dominant business model for day tours on Phu Quoc is the commission stop. The operator sells a day cheaply - USD 20 to USD 30 is normal - and makes the margin from a percentage of what the group spends at a pearl showroom, a sim wine shed, a honey stall, a fish sauce showroom and a pepper farm. The percentage is typically fifteen to thirty per cent and it is paid to the driver, the guide, the operator or all three.

The consequences run deeper than an inflated price. The route is chosen by who pays rather than what is worth seeing. The guide has a financial interest in what you believe. Producers who refuse to pay commission are simply never visited, which over time selects for showrooms over farms. And the price you pay at the counter has to carry the commission, so you pay roughly double the gate price for pepper.

None of this is illegal and most of the people involved are not villains. It is a stable equilibrium that everybody in the industry understands and almost nobody explains to visitors.

What we do instead

We pay a flat visit fee, per group, agreed once a year, in cash, handed over in front of you. We take nothing from anything you buy. If you buy nothing at all, the producer receives exactly the same amount and the day is identical.

These figures are not confidential and we would rather publish them than be asked. Our guides know them, and if you ask one on the day they will tell you the number and then hand it over where you can see.

How you can check any of this

1. Ask the guide what we pay, on the day. They will tell you. If a guide of ours ever refuses or gives a vague answer, tell us and we will deal with it.
2. Watch the handover. It happens at the start of each visit, in front of the group, not quietly at the end.
3. Compare the counter price. Ask the farm what a Vietnamese customer pays per kilo. It will be the same price you are offered. At a commission stop it is not.
4. Buy nothing and see what changes. Nothing will. Nobody will follow you to the vehicle and the visit will not shorten.
5. Ask a producer directly. Through the guide, or in your own Vietnamese if you have it. They have no reason to protect us.

We are aware that a page claiming we take no commission is exactly what an operator taking commission would also write. The list above is the only useful response to that: five things you can check yourself in the course of a normal day.

Why we cap groups, which is the other half

The fee model only works with small groups. At eight people a farm visit is a conversation; at twenty-five it is a demonstration, and a demonstration is worth less to you and less to the farmer, who becomes a performer rather than a host.

It also protects the places themselves. Rach Vem at weekends is a working example of what volume does to a hamlet of forty households. We do not run a scheduled trip there and we reach it on a weekday morning on the bike day, with six riders.

Small groups are expensive. A guide and a vehicle cost the same for six people as for twenty-five, and that arithmetic is the whole reason our day costs USD 55 rather than USD 25. The full breakdown is on the prices page.

What we do not claim

• We are not a social enterprise and we are not a charity. We are a small commercial tour operator that has made a specific choice about how it pays suppliers.
• We do not fund a school, a clinic or a beach clean, and we would rather pay our partners properly than run a project we could photograph.
• We do not offset flights and we are not going to tell you that your trip is carbon neutral, because it is not.
• We do not claim that tourism preserves these villages. It changes them. What we claim is that the money we bring reaches the person doing the work, which is a small and checkable thing.
• We do not vet our partners social arrangements or family lives. They are suppliers we pay fairly, not projects we oversee.

Questions travellers ask most

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