William had emigrated to Malaysia for years and set up a restaurant in a renowned seafood centre there. At a recent travel trade exhibition held in Malaysia, William met his friend Patrick from Hong Kong. Patrick, a general manager of a Hong Kong travel agency, was responsible for designing itineraries for his company’s group tours. In order to secure Patrick’s assistance in putting his restaurant on the company’s approved list, William proposed giving Patrick $30,000 plus a further commission of $10 per head for future referral of tourists. William added that the money could be deposited in the bank account of Patrick’s wife to avoid any trouble.

Later, William’s restaurant was successfully included in the travel agency’s approved list upon Patrick’s recommendation. Soon after that, William deposited $30,000 into the bank account of Patrick’s wife.

Given the increasing demand of the hotel guests for local tour services, the hotel’s senior management decided to set up a consignment corner for a travel agency to deal with these requests. Janice, the hotel’s Marketing Manager, was assigned to the task.

It seemed only natural, therefore, for Janice to call Tommy, her brother-in-law, to enquire whether the travel agency he worked for would be interested.

In the midst of a recession, the performance of Tommy’s company had already been discouraging.

Hence, the pressure on Tommy, the Business Development Manager, to find a solution was intensified.  The prospect of winning the consignment corner came as a huge relief to Tommy.  He explained that this would save his career and urged Janice to grant the consignment contract to his travel agency. Believing that Tommy’s agency was as good as any other agencies and no one would discover their relationship, Janice made her decision easily.

A month later, as a token of gratitude, Tommy presented Janice a tour package to Hawaii as her birthday present.

Xenia was a staff member of the ticketing department of a travel agent.  Her close friend, Xaviera, worked in the sales department of an airline company.  Knowing that Xaviera was new and facing tremendous pressure to meet sales target, Xenia always encouraged her customers to purchase air tickets from Xaviera’s airline.

One day after Xaviera received a warning letter about her poor sales performance, she felt distressed and sought comfort from Xenia.  While supporting Xaviera, Xenia received a phone call from an insurance company requesting 50 air tickets for a corporate trip to a convention in Europe.   Xenia knew this would be a good opportunity to help Xaviera out of her predicament.  To secure the business, Xenia marked up prices from competing airlines when making quotations to the insurance company, steering the company toward Xaviera’s airline. As a result of the misleading pricing information provided by Xenia, the insurance company chose to book the tickets with Xaviera’s company.